


We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

by R00bs_Teacup



Series: Harry Potter AU [2]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Drama, Modern
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-15 22:12:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11815218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/R00bs_Teacup/pseuds/R00bs_Teacup
Summary: The boys are off on a hunt for ice dragons!





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CanadianGarrison](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CanadianGarrison/gifts).



> "It keeps eternal whisperings around  
>  Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell  
>  Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell  
>  Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.  
>  Often 'tis in such gentle temper found,  
>  That scarcely will the very smallest shell  
>  Be moved for days from where it sometime fell.  
>  When last the winds of Heaven were unbound.  
>  Oh, ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired,  
>  Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;  
>  Oh ye! whose ears are dinned with uproar rude,  
>  Or fed too much with cloying melody---  
>  Sit ye near some old Cavern's Mouth and brood,  
>  Until ye start, as if the sea nymphs quired!" 
> 
> John Keats
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> *
> 
> de Foix has an Effect: even in the Leaky Couldron which has become in most ways the ultimate wizard hipster bar, he makes his surroundings seem like a sticky-floored, dim-lit, smoke-filled, Den of Iniquity. When Porthos walks in he would swear he sees the ghost of Old Tom behind the bar, griming up some glasses just for de Foix. But, Tom isn’t dead, he exists quite happily listening to Fortescue talk about history, eating ice cream, so Porthos approaches the table and Treville gets up to clasp his hand and arm warmly, smile easier than Porthos has seen it since he admitted he’d quit. 
> 
>  
> 
> “This is my best friend,” Treville says, nudging de Foix roughly until he gets up and takes Porthos’s hand. “de Foix, this is Porthos, he is mad enough to hunt ice dragons with you.”
> 
>  
> 
> “Yep,” Porthos concedes, smiling widely and madly, tilting his head so his earring catches the light. de Foix lets out a laugh that’s low and slow and rumbles. Porthos grins. He’s going to get along just fine with this guy. He takes a seat. “Nice power play, by the way, Trev. He has my first name but I only got a surname? Dude, come on.”
> 
>  
> 
> “‘Dude’,” Treville mouths, grimacing. “I dunno his first name. What’s your first name?”
> 
>  
> 
> de Foix shoves Treville and they have a fight that Porthos is sure will end up on the floor like puppies wrestling, but at that moment a woman comes over in jeans and a t-shirt and shoves between them. 
> 
>  
> 
> “Hi uncle Jean,” she says, kissing Treville’s cheek. 
> 
>  
> 
> “I am not old enough to be your uncle, sprout,” Treville grumbles, elbowing her. “This is Lucie, de Foix’s incorrigible sister. She might try to kiss you.”
> 
>  
> 
> “It was once,” Lucie says, elbowing him back. “And as I told you at the time, it was a distraction, I did not enjoy it and would do anything to never have to repeat the experience.”
> 
>  
> 
> “Wow, that good, Treville?” Porthos says, laughing, holding up his glass to clink Lucie’s, which she happily does before downing her pint. Porthos watches, wide eyed. 
> 
>  
> 
> “Yeah, she’s coming with us, and that is a normal thing she does,” de Foix says. “My name’s Henri. Treville knows, he just refuses to remember because he thinks it’s far too posh.”
> 
>  
> 
> They shake hands again and both Lucie and Treville roll their eyes. They’re joined half an hour later by the man behind the bar, not the ghost of Tom after all but someone who has definitely been a soldier at some point, by the name of Christoph. He shakes Porthos’s hand too, and doesn’t get a surname. Introductions are, it seems, patchy. They drink a lot and then head in a slightly wavering line down the Alley to the offices of a Paul Meunier who apparently owns the ship they are using to hunt their dragons. Porthos stays blissfully sober and is happy to get both first and surname from Munier, along with actual paper work and plans. 
> 
>  
> 
> “They probably would get out of the bar at some point,” Lucie says, as they exit back into the sunlight later, taking Porthos’s arm. “Between me and you, though, I think we can make a real go of this instead of one of their usual drunken, half-planned masterpieces.”
> 
>  
> 
> “Good lord,” Porthos mutters, watching Treville and de Foix and Christophe, arms around each other’s waists, singing. They part at the end of the alley and say goodbye by banging their heads joyfully together. 
> 
>  
> 
> “Yeah,” Lucie says. “That’s my baby brother.”
> 
>  
> 
> It turns out that their hunt for ice dragons is, in fact, Phillippe Feron’s hunt for ice dragons, which he has graciously allowed them to tag along on due to having a slight acquaintance with Belgarde. It also turns out, when Porthos and Athos go with de Foix to meet the man, that ‘graciously’ is not correct and is in fact the opposite of Feron’s attitude. Ingracious with a touch of asperity and petulance is more accurate. Porthos sticks his feet on Feron’s desk and eats crisps loudly to annoy him, arguing every point, which, paradoxically, gets him a twist of a grin. Feron gets awkwardly to his feet and leans over the desk. 
> 
>  
> 
> “This is my trip, my ship, my crew,” Feron says, low and almost seductive, very forceful. “You work for me, now.”
> 
>  
> 
> Porthos snorts but takes his feet off the desk and holds out a hand after sucking the flavoured dust off his fingers. Feron eyes it but takes it with a sigh and Porthos grins up at him trying to look simple. Athos and de Foix both give him irritable looks on their way out, but Porthos doesn’t care. That was fun. 
> 
>  
> 
> “Oh, Vallon,” Feron says, lightly, before they can fully escape, opening the office door and calling down the stairs. Porthos turns and waits. “You are a Belgarde, Treville tells me. I have only a slight acquaintance with Treville, you’ll have to tell me about his younger days with your father. The three musketeers, I believe you were called, de Foix?”
> 
>  
> 
> Feron smiles smugly and shuts the door firmly before he can see Porthos smiling up the stairs back at him. He turns to Athos and links their arms, laughing softly as they hit the street of Diagon Alley again. Feron’s offices (which seem to be a vanity project, Feron doesn’t seem to have a profession as far as Porthos could tell what he currently does is bet on duels down Nocturne Alley) are on a corner near the bank, on the second floor of a ‘historic’ building that’s really just old. Porthos heads them toward the ice cream shop, patting Athos’s hand. 
> 
>  
> 
> “I’m sorry,” de Foix says. 
> 
>  
> 
> “Hmm?” Porthos says, then smiles at him and lets him off the hook. “Nah, Trev told me about that lot ages ago. Took his time, mind, I was pretty pissed when he finally came out that he knew who I was. I assume you know?”
> 
>  
> 
> “Yes,” de Foix says. “You look an awful lot like your mother.”
> 
>  
> 
> “But with my father’s eyes,” Porthos says, nodding, then laughs. “I do look a bit like him, too, right?”
> 
>  
> 
> “Yes,” de Foix says. “You sometimes have his bearing, as well.”
> 
>  
> 
> “When I’m defensive,” Porthos says, nodding. “He taught me brutally, it sticks.”
> 
>  
> 
> They meet the rest of their research party later; Lucie and de Foix, Christophe, a school friend of Lucie’s called Charlotte Melendorf who seems to own half of Sweden and has been studying Swedish dragons for years, two young men who worked with de Foix on a previous trip called Brujon and Clermont who Porthos can’t tell apart honestly, and then the four of them. d’Artagnan has brought Constance and they both take an instant liking to Lucie and have a discrete unspoken argument about who should get to flirt with her. Which neither of them win, because ten minutes late Cho Chang walks into the room (Porthos’s living room, a little small for such a gathering - the cats keep getting sat on so they’re hiding in the kitchen with Athos) and Lucie’s eyes go all sparkly and wide. 
> 
>  
> 
> “Chang!” Porthos cries happily, shoving his way through to embrace her. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in Romania, with Charlie Weasley?”
> 
>  
> 
> “Weasley’s been running the dragon colony in Wales for years, Vallon,” Cho says, hugging him back, exasperated. “And I’m here because this is a hunt for dragons and I happen to have written rather a lot about.. .hmm. That’s right, dragons.”
> 
>  
> 
> “Ten PhDs,” Porthos agrees proudly, keeping an arm over her shoulders and introducing her around. 
> 
>  
> 
> He only exaggerates her accomplishments a tiny bit, but when they reach Lucie he goes all out to impress her and Cho elbows him and tells him to piss off, so he goes to sit on the kitchen floor with Athos. Athos usually has food and whiskey in these situations, both of which are nice. They end up lying on the floor drunk, the cats curled up on them, singing. 
> 
>  
> 
> *
> 
> It turns out that one can’t just appear in the Antarctic and happily tramp about in snow. It turns out one has to do survival courses and camp in the snow and try living in a tent in an artificially freezing simulation and all kinds of terrible things. They walk up mountains in Scotland and Wales and live in an Arctic research place for a week and learn what to do about frostbite and how to warm up people who get wet and how to survive without eating each other. Porthos enjoys himself immensely, he’s really good at charms and has no problems staying warm, no trouble putting up his tent in the gale, no problems with rain. He doesn’t use magic in the rain, that’s in Wales and it’s not that cold and it’s kind of joyful walking in it so he just spreads his arms and stamps in puddles. Athos has a little more trouble with the cold. Porthos finds him the third night of the artificially-freezing-camping trip, lips blue with cold. Porthos tells him off for not asking for help and wakes Aramis up so they can get in his sleeping bag with him. He kicks a lot but he doesn’t freeze to death so that works out ok.
> 
>  
> 
> Aramis doesn’t enjoy himself much. Aramis doesn’t like the rain. Aramis doesn’t like the rain at all. Porthos is almost certain (actually he’s a hundred percent certain) that Aramis’s face is wet with more than the rain, so he stops letting out his inner child and walks alongside Aramis for the rest of the trip, keeping quiet unless he hums to himself which he can’t quite help. Aramis seems to appreciate it. Sometimes. Sometimes he grimaces at Porthos and goes off to walk with d’Artagnan, leaving Porthos to stamp in puddles again. Porthos likes the trips to Scotland, he walks with Cho and she tells him about growing up in Glasgow and how little mountains featured and swears at the snow in Gaelic. Lucie walks with them and Porthos finds her cheerful and slightly wild company. She’s talkative and reckless while at the same time being ridiculously reasonable. It’s an odd combination but he enjoys her company. So does Cho. Porthos goes to walk with Aramis after a while, leaving them alone, holding hands with Aramis and grinning to himself until Aramis pinches the skin between his thumb and finger and demands to know what’s going on. 
> 
>  
> 
> Overall it’s six months before Feron deems them suitably capable of staying alive and bringing him back news about his dragons, and research that will get him money and possibly win him a bet of some sort. They get a week off to rest and then preparations begin in earnest. Munier’s ship, funnily enough, is not in Diagon Alley and they have to travel to Liverpool and stay in a hostel for the three days it takes to get the ship in order for an Antarctic trip. There’s not much for them to do except check their equipment and do reading and talk about things. Porthos takes d’Artagnan out for fish and chips and they end up skinny dipping. Aramis takes Porthos on a romantic date and they end up sleeping on the deck of the ship which pisses Munier off but he forgives them when Porthos offers him chocolate. It’s a long week. 
> 
>  
> 
> The ship is big, a merchant ship that Ferron is paying for. Munier has done Antarctica trips before, taking nature documentary crews and research projects and he’s put together an experienced team for them. Porthos likes walking up and down the deck, inspecting things and asking questions, but it’s not until they actually board that anyone bothers to talk to him about the charms and transfiguration in play, at which point it’s too late to dig up the original schematics and learn all about it. Instead he digs out the old ship’s cook and sits in the galley with him and questions him closely. He’s sailed with Munier for years and knows the ship as well as the schematics plus he has a huge store of tales to go along with it. Porthos nearly misses their departure listening to him. They hurry up onto the deck and stand by the rail as the whistles blow and sailors shout, the ropes are cast off with magic, and Munier strides about. They head out of the harbour under engines and pretend to be a muggle vessel. Porthos waves a white handkerchief and and weeps dramatically into Aramis’s shoulder, who laughs at him. When they reach the sea they open their sails, the white canvas filling with the wind and the spells, they’re under way. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more chapters because short chapters are nice apparently :)  
> I'll post a new chap every day

The first stretch of the journey is made ‘under sails’, charms amplifying and focusing the wind to send them scudding over the English Channel to La Rochelle. They spend the day the journey takes in a cabin with Cho Chang and Charlotte Mellendorf going over the information on the dragon they’re actually looking for. It’s only been a myth for years, the ice dragon, but Christoph and Lucie went with Luna Lovegood chasing the Crumple-Horned Snorcack and got a taste for mythological creatures. They tracked stories and references to many beasts in history and literature and legal documents before finding the ice dragon, a beast which had enough solid data to actually hunt. de Foix made the connection with Cho Chang and they managed to persuade her, and she brought in Mellendorf. A year ago they took a trip to Siberia and found traces, but ancient ones. Mellendorf theorised a migration and they followed stories and legends further and further south until they reached Antarctica. Once the story of how the expedition gathered the information has been told, Chang and Mellendorf start putting up slides of historic documents, going into data and charts and in depth about the species an ice dragon might be related to. Porthos listens attentively, Aramis and d’Artagnan play tic tac toe under the table, and Athos falls asleep on Porthos’s shoulder. de Foix and Christoph seem to be involved in some kind of silent game.

 

Luckily, they arrive at La Rochelle before Lucie’s fuming bursts out into anger, and Mellendorf and Chang are too busy excitedly feeding each other’s academic geekery to even notice their audience’s indifference. Munier decides to sail round to  Portugal and stop at Sines, which means they only stay at anchor overnight at La Rochelle. The cabins are small and the beds are suspended, like hammocks, to rock with the water, and Athos crawls into Porthos’s bed around two am and collapses, pale and sweaty and nauseated, so Porthos tries a few spells to keep the bed from rocking. It doesn’t work overly well. It explains Athos falling asleep in the day time, earlier. Porthos tries to help him sleep, then falls asleep himself and doesn’t wake until morning. They haven’t set sail yet so Porthos wriggles out from under Athos (who seems to be asleep for now) and goes to drag Aramis out of bed.

 

*

 

“He threw me in the sea!” Aramis cries in utter outrage, clambering back on board dripping wet.

 

The crew just laugh at him, those on duty at their posts getting the ship ready to leave, those not on duty joining Porthos in stripping down to take a swim. Aramis sits glaring until d’Artagnan comes wandering out and pushes him back in the water, much to Porthos’s joy. Aramis gives in and decides it’s not the most terrible way to wake up (though it’s close). d’Artagnan joins them and they splash around until Munier comes to grumpily tell them to get back on board or get left behind.

 

“I didn’t actually throw you in, you jumped,” Porthos defends, trying to get Aramis to let him under the warm shower in Aramis’s cabin.

 

“Use your own shower,” Aramis says. “I was too much asleep to make good decisions, you lead me astray.”

 

“Athos is asleep in my cabin,” Porthos complains, giving up on getting permission and barging in anyway, pushing Aramis gently against the wall.

 

“So?” Aramis says, nudging Porthos out of the way and out from under the water again.

 

“He was sea sick last night,” Porthos says. “I’m being Nice and letting him sleep.”

 

“By waking me up and letting d’Artagnan push me in the sea,” Aramis grumbles, but he allows Porthos some water.

 

Porthos takes Aramis into his arms, because that’s the only way they can both fit under the shower and get the warmth of the water. It’s nice, very warming, so close together. Aramis melts and leans in closer, hands getting into Porthos’s hair to help get the salt and sea-debris out. Porthos returns the favour by washing Aramis’s hair properly, then washing Aramis all over, by which time he’s warm and languid and Aramis is in a much more forgiving mood; he even admits the swim wasn’t terrible. They head to the galley in search of breakfast and then search out Athos, who is still not enjoying the sea and is still lying in Porthos’s bed being pale and pathetic.

 

“Do you think we should do something?” Porthos asks, giving Athos’s hip a poke and eliciting a moan.

 

“Like what?” Aramis says. “Poke him? No.”

 

“Make him feel better,” Porthos says. Poking Athos again.

 

They go in search of a cure for seasickness. The cook, Mr Cantier, suggest ginger and makes them some hot water to soak it in. Athos retches and refuses to drink after the first sip, even when Porthos takes it back to Cantier and Cantier calls Athos a sop but adds honey. The Botswain tells them to piss off as he’s got work to do but suggests standing on deck and watching the horizon. Athos throws up into the water, which seems to help for a little bit. The ship’s cat suggests Athos sit on deck and let her purr at him which also actually helps; Athos relaxes a bit and sits there for the next three hours with his eyes closed, petting the cat. Porthos and Aramis go in search of other remedies and ask Christoph who suggests firewhiskey. Porthos and Aramis give that a go before offering it to Athos, sitting at de Foix’s table in his cabin and listening to de Foix reminiscing about past adventures with Treville and Christoph. They don’t save enough firewhiskey to offer it to Athos but he thanks them all the same, maybe for not trying to get him drunk. They sit either side of him, loose and giggly and pleased with the world. d’Artagnan comes along, sure footed on the rocky boat.

 

“Charlie!” Porthos calls happily, holding up his arm. “Good to see you! Where have you been?”

 

“I went to talk to the doctor,” d’Artagnan says, coming and sitting at Porthos’s side under his arm. “She’s super nice. Agnes. She has the cutest little boy she has pictures of him everywhere, he stayed with his Dad this trip though seeing as we’re going to the land of all ice.”

 

“Fascinating,” Athos says, the first words he’s spoken in a while. His hand is still on the cat, the other gripping Porthos’s knee. “Summon me up a bucket Porthos.”

 

“No need,” d’Artagnan says, sitting forward. “Just chew on this, Agnes says it’ll help you feel less nauseated. She says it’ll probably die down pretty soon anyway when you get your legs.”

 

“I am not putting anything in my mouth,” Athos says, through gritted teeth. “I have my legs.”

 

“Actually you seem to have mine,” Porthos says, wincing at how hard Athos is gripping his knee. He summons a bucket and Aramis holds Athos’s hair while he… doesn’t throw up. “Huh. You can chew on d’Artagnan’s seaweed afterall.”

 

Athos does, and after five minutes his sweaty white skin returns to a more normal colour. Ten minutes after that he relaxes and stops clinging to Porthos’s leg. Then after a bit he strokes the cat again. And then he looks up.

 

“I’m hungry,” he says.

 

“Me too,” d’Artagnan says, jumping to his feet with enthusiasm and pulling Athos up, displacing the cat to Aramis’s lap.

 

Porthos shifts so he’s next to Aramis and they look out together. They’re sat at the back of the ship, on the second deck, their backs against the wooden sides. There’s a deck above them giving them shade, and sails and wind, and below them the ship drops to the waves, white foam and blue.

 

“It’s beautiful here,” Porthos says. “Do you think they’ll let me have a go?”

 

“Have a go’?” Aramis repeats, enunciating each word.

 

“Yeah, you know. Steer, pull the ropes, make the jib, come around, do some tacking,” Porthos says, repeating things he’s heard.

 

“No,” Aramis says, pulling his knees up and resting his head on one, dismissing Porthos’s enthusiasm.

 

“‘mis?” Porthos asks, resting a hand on his shoulder.

 

“Mm? Oh, I’m fine. I’ve been thinking of an old friend… never mind,” Aramis says, smiling and tipping his head so he can look at Porthos instead of gazing randomly. Porthos smiles back and kisses him.

 

“Now do you think they’ll let me help?” Porthos says.

 

“Still no,” Aramis says, laughing, leaning into his side.

 

Porthos goes to ask anyway. Munier tells him to piss off but Fleur Boudin at the wheel is nicer. She doesn’t let him steer, in fact she laughs uproariously at the idea, but she lets him sit with her and eat sandwiches. Which is what she’s doing, her wand doing most of the work of steering, holding the wheel steady or making incremental adjustments. She tells him what she’s doing and how it’s effecting the ship around bites of sandwich and telling him a story about a giant octopus that apparently attacks at night. She gets up when she’s done with lunch and stands at the wheel, her long hair blown back, legs shoulder width apart. She grins over her shoulder at him.

 

“Do I look picturesque, like a piratical captain?” Fleur asks, then laughs. She’s only twenty two and Porthos is astounded that at her age he’d thought himself fully grown up, she looks so young.

 

“Sure,” he says.

 

“My father wanted things of me, after school. I went to school in France you know? But I bet I’d have been in Hufflepuff, it sounds like the best house,” Fleur says. “I wanted to do something, though. Anything. Just… do. So I signed on to sail tall ships over the summer and then the captain let me stay and here I am. It took me a long time to learn to steer her. She’s my ship now.”

 

Porthos goes to see one or two of the guys who are scaling the ropes up and down the sail, but there aren’t any. Just one or two down below fiddling with things. He asks if he can climb up to the crowsnest but they just laugh at him and pretend they only speak French. Even when he asks in French they just laugh. So, he gives up and goes to gather Aramis and they go back up to the little room where Fleur steers from. There are instruments and levers and all kinds of things that Porthos speculates on the use for, Fleur he’s sure is lying when she says one is a huge fishing net to catch the giant octopus. Even so he dreams that night of an octopus bigger than the squid in the lake, dreams of lying flat on his stomach on the desk and tickling its tentacles, of being bundled up and rocked and thrown about. He wakes up to realise the movement isn’t in a dream.

 

“Wha’?” he mutters, sitting up only for the bed to be set violently askew again, knocking him back.

 

He gets down and is thrown against the wall, stumbles to the door and falls. His heart’s beating too hard and he’s breathless as he makes his way down the corridor toward Athos’s room, hitting the walls and bouncing off, falling again. He makes it, glad that Athos is close, and falls in crashing to the floor. Athos is awake and he gets carefully out of bed, holding on, and helps Porthos up, shuts the door. He laughs when Porthos falls into him, completely losing his sense of steadiness.

 

“There’s a storm,” Athos says, pushing Porthos so he’s on the bed instead of mostly on Athos. “Are you ok?”

 

“Yeah,” Porthos mumbles into Athos’s pillows. “I thought it was the octopus come to get me back for tickling.”

 

“I was going to come find you, did you bring your wand or just yourself?”

 

Porthos holds up his hand, clenched around his wand. Of course he has his wand. He always has his wand. Athos climbs back onto the bed and lies down on his back.

 

“Do something about this confounded bed? It keeps trying to kick me out,” Athos says. Porthos is about to ask questions when, sure enough, the bed kicks, rolling violently with the storm. Then it bucks and heaves and they cling to the covers. “I tried to attach it to the floor before, when I was sick. It doesn’t like me now.”

 

Porthos understands and does a quick spell to find out what Athos tried and what he actually did, then undoes it and lets the bed loose to hang like a hammock. Now when the sea and deck roll the boat rocks, which is unsettling but no longer tries to get them onto the floor.

 

“I can’t sleep like this,” Porthos mutters, as they sway.

 

“I quite like it,” Athos says. “It’s like being at the top of a tree in a gale.”

 

He starts to hum. Porthos groans and wishes d’Artagnan hadn’t cured Athos of his sickness. Athos laughs cheerfully and he waves his wand in a lazy, happy circle, tearing the curtains from across the two portholes and revealing the storm outside. It’s not so dark that they can’t see the tumult, the waves and dark sky and crashes of lightning. Athos’s wand is still circling, trying, perhaps, to see more? Whatever it is he’s trying to do what he actually ends up doing is letting in the storm. The portholes open and widen and a wave crashes in over them, soaking the bed and dripping onto the floor, the wind gets blown in, another wave.

 

“Oops,” Athos says, laughing again, happy as a pig in mud.

 

Porthos fixes the wall so they are no longer being rained on, and dries them and the bed out. He adds a little extra heat and sinks into the warmth, hoping he’ll drift off. Instead a wild roll of thunder and particularly violent movement makes him start awake and he’s sat up, wand trained on the door, before he can think.

 

“Aw, sorry,” Athos says, sitting up too and embracing Porthos, stroking his cheek. “Has it got you on edge?”

 

“No,” Porthos grumbles, resting his chin on Athos’s shoulder and digging it in. “I’m not on edge.”

 

The door opens then though and proves Porthos wrong: he’s up off the bed and his wand has the door slammed, whoever was entering is dragged in and pinned to the wall and the room is filled with a bright light so none of them can see a thing, Porthos’s wand pressing to the newcomer’s throat. The ship rolls and Porthos is thrown onto the bed.

 

“Ow,” Aramis complains, climbing up after him.

 

“Oh. Hi,” Porthos says, lying himself face down and putting the light out.

 

“The storm has him on edge,” Athos says. Sagely. Porthos reaches out to hit him but Athos just laughs, lying down half on top of him. Aramis climbs over them and lies down the other side with a yawn. “It’s alright, Porthos. I’ll be on guard tonight.”

 

Porthos snorts, but it does make something tight and clenched inside him give a little, and his grip on his wand loosens. Aramis nods, head against Porthos’s shoulder, and yawns again, stretching and letting his limbs flop wherever they will, all over Porthos and the covers and somehow with many more limbs that he should have. Or maybe a fraction of them are Porthos’s. He’s not sure. Maybe they’re merging and turning into an octopus.

 

“Before you go to sleep,” Athos whispers, lips right by Porthos’s ear. “Please can you get rid of the jellyfish that came in with the waves? Only, it’s kind of squishy and I think it’s dead.”

 

Porthos locates the jellyfish and banishes it back to the ocean where it belongs, hopefully not quite dead yet. Aramis makes the bed rock as much as the storm with his laughter, clinging to Porthos and snorting and gulping and gasping as Athos tells of their adventures with the portholes. Aramis takes Porthos’s wand and makes the portholes merge together in an uneven shape, so Athos can watch the storm. Porthos tucks his wand safe under him and grumbles at them, but he can sleep now; Aramis is warm and tangled up with him, Athos is quiet and content, telling them about what he can see. Athos’s soft voice and Aramis’s snoring help offset the unfamiliarity of the bed and the crashing of the storm, and Porthos drowses, then dreams.

 

The next day is stormy and it’s Porthos’s turn to be unsettled about the ocean. He stays in Athos’s bed for the day, clinging to the covers. Athos gives him stuff to chew but he’s not nauseated so it just makes him bad tempered because it tastes bad. d’Artagnan comes and curls up with him, missing Constance and tired after not sleeping well in the storm, and Athos and Aramis leave them to it. Porthos and d’Artagnan get up as the day ends and make their way cautiously through the ship, Porthos hanging on to d’Artagnan and leaning on the wall, the deck moving and jolting under him. They make it to a room where there are men settled around tables, eating or playing cards or reading. Athos and Aramis are sat in one corner with Clermont and Brujon, playing poker. Porthos sits between them and gets introduced to the other two again, still can’t quite tell which is which, and gives up. He watches the game around him and slumps more and more into Athos’s side, miserable and uncomfortable.

 

“Are you feeling seasick?” Brujon-or-Clermont asks, smiling over the table at him, distracting from the game. Porthos thinks he’s probably bluffing. He nudges Athos to let him know.

 

“No,” Porthos says, remembering to answer the question. “It’s just weird. Not sick.”

 

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Clermont-or-Brujon says. “Cler got seasick the first voyage we came on but it didn’t hit me till our first storm, then I panicked and was a right scaredy.”

 

“I’m not scared,” Porthos says, sitting up indignantly. “I’m just… dizzy.” He mutters the last bit and slumps against Athos again. “Everything’s moving.”

 

“You get used to it,” Clermont-or-Brujon says. It must be Brujon, he said Cler before and that must be Clermont. Porthos nods.

 

“Do you guys think we’ll find these dragons?” Clermont asks, eagerly. “I heard de Foix tell a story about one with ice for talons, and when it takes off its wings shatter and reform from the condensation of its breath.”

 

“If they exist we’ll find them,” Aramis says, winning the pot. There are groans and good natured jibes and then they deal again, including d’Artagnan this time. Porthos doesn’t tell that Aramis always cheats. It’s he who taught Aramis how, after all, it seems bad manners. Athos elbows Porthos, so he obviously knows and wants to win this time. Porthos shrugs. “I think doctor Chang was saying they probably don’t fly, or not in the air, they fly like penguins do: the mechanics of flight but in the water.”

 

“Do you think they’re big? One of the fairy tales from Siberia said the monster was as big as a house and breathed ice-fire,” Brujon says.

 

Porthos focusses on the game for a while so he can counteract Aramis’s cheating and help Athos win, counting the cards as they play and nudging and yawning to let Athos know what to do. It distracts him from the misery of the storm and he sits up when Athos has won on a bluff, everyone except Aramis folding. Aramis should have won, and he glowers at Porthos. Porthos, realising he is literally stuck between two people he has been helping cheat one another, tries to look innocent and drooping and sad. And maybe a bit pathetic.

 

“I think we’ll probably find them,” he says, making his voice hoarse and sick-sounding, letting his eyes fall half shut. “I don’t think they’ll breathe ice-fire though. That isn’t a thing.”

 

“Oh give over,” Aramis grumbles. “Fine. Let’s play something else, something Porthos doesn’t cheat everyone on.”

 

It takes them a while to find a game Porthos doesn’t know how to cheat at, which makes him feel absurdly proud. There are only so many people who can cheat at Go Fish and even less who bother. He is a unique and special snowflake. Or so Athos tells him, kissing Porthos’s temple. It’s easier, later, to get back to Aramis’s cabin, even with the moving deck and the storm and d’Artagnan comes with them and they let him bunk with them, it’s easier to sleep with familiar bodies around you in a storm, stuck in the middle of the ocean. It’s less afraid. Porthos drifts half asleep for a long time but eventually it turns into a dream of flying, playing quidditch back at Hogwarts, Aramis stinking of sweat and summer time, his lips warm. Porthos wakes smiling to calm seas and blue skies and the promise of Sines before nightfall and a bed on land.

 

They don’t really have duties on board the ship so as soon as they’re anchored they’re told to piss off and not return for two days. That is fine with Porthos, he packs himself a few things and climbs aboard the little motorboat for the shore with relief in his heart. Sines is industrial, it’s incredibly clear even though it’s raining and it’s kind of darkening to evening when they arrive. The port is deep and full of muggle oil tankers, colossal as their small boat passes to drop them ashore. There are white houses which are nice but they’re grimed with oil and dirt and pollution. Porthos has a guidebook from Flourish and Blotts and leads them to the wizarding pub, which turns out to have pool and a TV and be broadcasting football. It’s the mugglest wizarding pub he’s ever been in but the staff are nice and the rooms are big and comfortable and, crucially, not on a boat. It does feel like they’re still on a boat but apparently that is normal. Porthos sleeps with Athos in a double bed, leaving Aramis and d’Artagnan with the twin.

 

“Porthos? Are you asleep?” Athos whispers.

 

“Yes,” Porthos decides, too drowsy to deal with whatever Athos wants.

 

“Ok,” Athos says, then is silent. Pointedly so. Porthos sighs. “There’s a beach here and sea we should go swimming tomorrow do you speak Portuguese? We should learn while we’re here and also we should try and find a good fish place and I think I’ll go to shul while we’re here.”

 

“Ok,” Porthos says. Athos seems content. They’re quiet for a while, the rain letting up. “Athos? You asleep?”

 

“Yep,” Athos says.

 

“I’ve never seen a dragon before,” Porthos whispers.

 

“Nor have I,” Athos whispers back, and they share an excited silence for a bit, hands held, breath close. “This was a good idea.”

 

“Yeah,” Porthos agrees. “Do you feel like you’re rocking?”

 

“Yeah, I like it.”

 

“Not feeling sick?”

 

“No.”

 

There’s silence for a while again. Next time Porthos asks if Athos is awake, he’s not. And then, soon, Porthos isn’t either. When they wake up in the morning Aramis has wriggled in between them with a mug of coffee and a map of the town, and has tourist plans that they have to go along with. That, or risk Aramis not sharing his coffee, which is just cruel. They allow Aramis his tourism for the first day, Porthos stuck to his guide book and Athos with his nose in a phrases book while Aramis gets enthusiastic about local sights. Which seem to be something about fishing, the oil tankers, and a marina with a single yacht in it. The pub is full of sailors that night and Athos doesn’t come to bed until the early hours of the morning, drunk and pleased and teaching a very sleepy and grumpy Porthos some new swear words in Portuguese. Their second day they spend on the beach. It’s not white sand and clear seas, the water is oily and polluted, but it’s beachy enough. Athos sleeps on a towel and Porthos crouches in the shallows looking for magical beasts, trying to see if there’s anything interesting living here. He finds nothing and in the afternoon they’re all packed aboard the small motor boat again and taken out to their ship, loaded into their cabins, and given orders to stay out of the way until they’re underway tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canadiangarrison, the jellyfish is just for you


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: porthos talks about his Mum dying in the past when he was little, mention of HP version of war stuff, the bad slytherins and hate. de Foix and Porthos talk abotu the past im not sure what to warn for, let me know if I need to add stuff sorry

Porthos sleeps alone and is surprised at how well he sleeps, how his body relaxes back into the almost familiar rocking of the ship and his bed. He dreams about violins and merpeople, of huge shells and tiny octopuses on leads, pets like the grindylows. He wakes to the botswain’s whistle, far too early, and goes in search of breakfast and coffee. No one else is up from his party except Brujon, so Porthos sits with Brujon in the mess and they watch the comings and goings of the crew. Fleur comes and says hello and flirts with Brujon, to which he looks alarmed and stutters. Porthos asks him about it but he just flushes a deep red and mutters something about being bi and leaving a boy at home. Lucie comes and joins them and seems like she’s trying to drown herself in coffee for a while before waking up a bit, talking about Cho Chang with long sighs, and then getting them onto dragons.

 

“I saw a Welsh Green, once,” Brujon says. “It was spectacular. I know they’re dangerous creatures but I can see why some people think them beautiful. There’s so much power and they can fly! This great hulking animal that just, whoosh, up into the air.”

 

“I haven’t seen one,” Porthos says.

 

“I saw an occamy once,” Lucie says. “And a swooping evil.”

 

“We had an occamy at the triwizard,” Porthos says, brightening. “It was cross-bred with a dragon. Didn’t fill space like an occamy, but man she was fantastic. She could spit fire.”

 

“With… with a dragon?” Brujon says. “Who in their right mind would try something like that?”

 

Porthos grins, thinking of Hagrid. It hadn’t been Hagrid who bred the occamy, of course, but he might have wanted to. He’d have thought of it. Porthos misses his friends, suddenly and sharply, wonders what they’re doing now. It’s May, they’ll be getting ready for summer, a whole school year behind them. A whole year with Professor Michael Jenkins as transfiguration teacher, without Porthos. Mcgonagall persuaded them, in the end, to take a sabbatical instead of just quitting so Professor Michael Jenkins has only got Hogwarts space until Porthos wants it back. He is placeholder. That is a comforting thought.

 

“Let me tell you about this guy I met once,” Lucie says, distracting him from his thoughts. “He was such an odd guy. He had this absolute obsession about ashwinders, all kinds of theories and wacky ideas, none of which turned out to be true. But he thought it would be a good idea to see what would come of a union between an ashwinder and an occamy.”

 

“What happened?” Brujon asks.

 

Lucie mimes an explosion and Brujon and Porthos laugh, though Porthos does it reluctantly.

 

“Seriously,” Lucie says, grinning. “Ashwinders only live long enough to lay their eggs, but the occamy lives, you know. An actual length of time we can measure. Anyway, this one did fit into whatever available space there was, in this case firstly the fireplace, then the house. My guy ran off and his house exploded. The occywinder slithered away and he never saw it again. Somewhere out there there’s a creature that gets hotter and hotter till it explodes, then it shrinks and off it goes to explode again.”

 

“I don’t think the ice dragons’ll be like that,” Brujon says, sounding uncertain.

 

“I reckon a dragon is at least as likely to explode as an ashamy,” says a crewman, turning from his own table to join them. “Let me tell you about this vicious longhorn I met once, when me and a cousin were camping.”

 

Porthos slips away a bit later, leaving the room to it’s storytelling, and goes in search of Aramis and more coffee. He ends up in de Foix’s cabin, with de Foix, Christoph, Cho Chang, and Aramis. Chang and Christoph are arguing over a map, de Foix is smoking. Aramis and Porthos take seats when de Foix invites them but refuse the offer of a cigar, Aramis accepts a bottle of butterbeer though.

 

“Next stop is Freetown,” de Foix tells Porthos, as Aramis throws himself into the map argument with gusto.

 

“I’ve been there,” Porthos says. “My Mum was from there. Her family went from Haiti to Freetown when they were first freed.”

 

“Yes,” de Foix says. “She told me a bit. I loved Marie Cessette, you know, I’m glad that Treville found you.”

 

“Sir,” Porthos says, taking Aramis’s bottle of butterbeer as something to occupy his hands.

 

“Go on,” de Foix says. “I can’t imagine Jean’s told you much, he’s one to leave things in the past and push forwards.”

 

“It’s only, Trev said you’d looked for me. Belgard was hardly in hiding, was he?”

 

“The Marche de Belgard is unplottable, and probably as well hidden and guarded as any school,” de Foix says. “We did find it, but he’d left you at the children’s home long ago by the time we did. We didn’t realise Marie had died, either. We knew she didn’t have much, but we didn’t know how… It wasn’t my most honourable moment, Porthos, but Belgard told us we were protecting her from death eaters, that she might be imperiused, that your safety was our priority. When she escaped, we followed her, and drove her into hiding. We realised Belgard had lied but too late; Marie was gone.”

 

“Why did you ever befriend him? He was a Belgard,” Porthos says.

 

“It was between the wars; he was a Belgard, yes, and a Slytherin when that was still synonymous with ‘death eater’. He was charismatic, though, and we thought he was a man throwing off a terrible past, a bad childhood. We cut him slack when he slipped up. We were young and romantic, and had that romantic idea that our good company taught him gentleness. He was fun, too; we’d go off for weeks on end, chasing after death eaters, joyfully camping and working and following up leads, and then the fight. Vindication.

 

“When Harry Potter first reported fighting Voldemort, his first year, that was when we realised we’d been played. Belgard vanished and with him he took rather a lot of documents and information from the auror office. And he took Marie Cessette. She was one of the best aurors out there but even she was susceptible to his charm and once he had her he started a brutal regime to cut her off and isolate her. We did not notice until it was too late.”

 

Too late, too late, too late. It rang through de Foix’s story, and Porthos heard it in Treville’s voice. He stirred and drank the butterbeer, emptying the bottle. His mother hadn’t needed saving, she’d just needed friends, and hers had turned on her. Hunted her. They might have been trying to look out for her but it didn’t really change anything. She’d saved herself, in the end, and him too. Porthos smiles. She had been better than any of her colleagues and she would always be better than Treville, or de Foix. Porthos regretted that she’d had to save herself, but that she could... he’d never doubted that she could. He remembered her strength, always so strong, even if it was out of necessity.

 

“I wish she’d lived,” Porthos says, aching with it. “We were just getting on our feet when she got ill, we had a good life.”

 

“I am so sorry,” de Foix says, an echo of Treville.

 

They should have found him. But his mother had protected him, had him hidden, made him harder and harder to find. He had her mother’s name while she had always used her father’s. He hadn’t been named when they escaped. She had kept him quiet and secret. And unutterably loved. He remembers the warmth and safety of that.

 

“She was amazing,” he says.

 

“I failed,” de Foix says. “I made a mistake: I knew she could look after you, I never thought he might get you back. When he did, we couldn’t find you, we could only exert pressure on the ministry to exclude him and to have him investigated. They checked twice before they found you… practising. Rather than be investigated he gave a lot of money and gave you up.”

 

“Treville told me that part,” Porthos says. “Well, I found out some of it and he told me the rest when I asked him about it. You did what you could, I’m sure. It’s in the past.”

 

“You’d rather speak of other things,” de Foix says. “It’s funny, years ago I thought talking to you would be a kind of absolution. It turns out I don’t need absolution, though. I just live with my mistakes.”

 

“Thanks for not asking it of me,” Porthos says.

 

“And now, firewhiskey,” de Foix says.

 

They sit at their end of the table getting steadily drunker, trading embarrassing stories about Treville. de Foix has a seemingly infinite store of these and Porthos charms a quill under the table to take notes so he can keep the information for later use. He’s thwarted though. His quill is charmed by him and he’s drunk and he’s rather charmed by Aramis. When he looks at his notes the next day it’s a lot of scattered thoughts about how beautiful Aramis is, about his cheekbones, his smile, the way his profile looks against the porthole, the wonderful way he bends to lean on the table. Athos laughs himself silly at it, especially where it’s interspersed with a stray observation about the story de Foix was telling at the time; wow Treville was a git; he’d have looked hilarious in that; he fell down what?

 

“I heard some of your conversation with de Foix,” Aramis murmurs, later, lying in Porthos’s bed, both almost asleep.

 

“Ha, can you believe Trev-”

 

“Not that,” Aramis says.

 

“Oh. Yeah,” Porthos says.

 

“I’m glad you can find out some of what you need to know about that time,” Aramis says. “I wish…”

 

“Hmm?” Porthos says, sleepy and content, warm from Aramis’s body.

 

“Nothing. I wish someone telling me…” Aramis trails off again and Porthos assumes he’s fallen asleep and does the same.

 

 

*

 

Freetown is a long way from Sines but with magic it’s quickened to three days. They stop twice on the way and then anchor at Freetown. This is their last stop before they head out to the South Atlantic and open sea. They’re dropped once more and left to fend for themselves and once more it’s Porthos who has the guide book and finds the wizarding section. It’s a whole quarter, this time, a market and hotels and shops, an open square where people gather. Porthos remembered a little of it from when he was four and his mother brought him. He’s written to the only family member they’d found of hers: an aunt, Sandra. He got an owl from her just before they sailed and told her an approximate date, but he isn’t expecting to find her waiting in the square with her arms wide open to welcome him. He walks right into her embrace without pause.

 

“Porthos,” she says, warmly. “Good to see you!”

 

“I remember you,” he says, surprised at the truth of that.

 

“Really? You were very small,” Sandra says.

 

“I do,” he says. “You smelled like Chanel, you still do. And coffee.”

 

“Ha, you are right, I did and do,” Sandra says. “Fantastic. You remember?”

 

“Yes,” Porthos says, grinning. “You carried me. The tree! You put me in a tree.”

 

“Yes! I did. You were desperate to sit up there and be as tall as us,” Sandra says, beaming.

 

“Well now I am taller,” Porthos says, proud and pleased with himself for that, which must be a feeling from then. Sandra laughs and touches his cheek, and he hugs her again. “Oh!” Wait, this is Athos, Aramis and d’Artagnan. They’re my best friends. We’re hunting ice dragons.”

 

“Are you indeed? Dragons?” Sandra says. “Come, I’ll give you coffee and food, and you can tell me.”

 

Her flat is small but bright, plenty of light and open windows, the sofa is good and the food is better. Porthos tells her about the ship and the dragons, but then about Hogwarts, too, and teaching there, and his life. She returns the favour. They’ve been in touch so they know some of it but it’s nice to talk in person, and to hear about the people in Sandra’s life who knew his mother, to see their photographs and be told he can meet them if he wishes. Sandra also tells them that Sierre Leone has its own dragon reserve and that Freetown has a huge library and a wizarding section under ground there that stores a lot of the research from the reserve.

 

“We have our own myths of sea serpents and dragons,” Sandra tells them, over dinner. “Some are true, some less so, many have been rigorously studied. Sierra Leone has one of the world’s most prestigious wizarding universities in the Fourah Bay College, here, you should look up some of the researchers there.”

 

After dinner Athos, Aramis and d’Artagnan go for a wander and to find a place to stay and Porthos sticks around to help wash the dishes and talk to Sandra. It’s an odd sensation, having family like this. He hadn’t thought he did, really. Sandra sent him post by owl, little gifts on his birthday, cards, but she’d been so far away. She strokes his hair and tells him to cut it and asks about girlfriends, beaming when he tells her about Aramis and Athos.

 

“I’m sorry you couldn’t grow up here,” Sandra says, as evening turns to night, sat together in the kitchen. She sighs and tuts. “They wouldn’t let me keep you, I was considered an evil influence. Mary was living with me, then, and even if I’d promised to give her up, you’d not have been allowed to stay.”

 

“Mary?” Porthos asks.

 

“My… my friend,” Sandra says, smiling. “Yes, a good friend. We never wanted to use girlfriend, or wife, or any of those words. Just friends, for life. We lived together for years and years. She’s gone, now.”

 

“She died?” Porthos asks, and Sandra laughs.

 

“Oh, no, she left. Went to America,” Sandra says, smiling widely. “She had other callings in her life and she followed her heart and her job. She writes, she’ll come back one day.”

 

“Are you and she still friends?” Porthos asks.

 

“Yes,” Sandra says. “Whenever she returns she’ll have a home here. Until then, I have plenty of beautiful young women to keep me content.”

 

She laughs again and tells Porthos more seriously about the people in her life, the people she loves who love her. Eventually he heads out, promising to return the next day, and Sandra says she’ll show him Freetown. She holds him for a long time before letting him leave, and Porthos understands without her telling him that she wanted to have him here, wanted him to stay very badly. It wouldn’t have been like having a mother but it would have been family. He wishes it, then lets it go and is glad to have met her now. He heads toward the beach and checks the pubs in the wizarding section until he stumbles across some of the crew and tracks down Cho Chang. She’s sat at a small table on the sidewalk outside a cafe with Lucie and Charlotte, drinking cocktails and talking excitedly about the next stage of their voyage. Porthos tells them about the university and Charlotte lights up and starts talking a mile a minute about how it was founded by women and mostly run by women and quite spectacularly forward thinking, and dropping name after name of people she’d love to meet.

 

“My aunt might be able to help make introductions,” Porthos says.

 

He is instantly mightily popular and they get him fantastically drunk on very fruity sweet drinks. They also get him home safe to Aramis, who’s been waiting up for him. He falls into bed and sings quietly to himself, much to Aramis’s amusement. Athos wakes up and grumbles at them and tries to smother Porthos with a pillow, which isn’t friendly, and then Porthos falls asleep. The five days they’re in Freetown are a glorious whirl of sightseeing, being shown around by Sandra, meeting her friends, people who knew Marie. They spend hours at the university much to the others’ boredom and Porthos’s excitement; he trails after Lucie, Charlotte and Cho as they get into discussions with professors and dive into texts. Sandra watches him with some amusement and a little bewilderment, which confuses him until she explains that neither her nor Marie Cessette were much for books. Marie was clever and quick and liked to learn things but never did apply herself much, and Sandra was always much more interested in politics and art, so was more drawn to newspapers and blogs.

 

“It’s Shavuot, tomorrow,” Athos says, on their fourth evening, lying in bed with Porthos. He’s sleepy and pliant, soft in Porthos’s arms, and Porthos is enjoying curling up with him.

 

“Mm. Did you find a shul, here?” Porthos asks, trying to pay better attention to what Athos is saying and not get distracted by how soft his hair is and nice the bit of skin behind his ear is to stroke.

 

“Yes, your aunt Sandra gave me a recommendation and I went to have a look earlier, that’s what reminded me of Shavuot,” Athos says. “Would you eat cheese cake with me? Shavuot is dairy.”

 

“Always eat cheesecake, babe,” Porthos says. “I like cake.”

 

“Ok. Good. Sandra helped me find some stuff at the library at the uni,” Athos says. “I like Shavuot, it’s really spiritual, staying up together and connecting ideas together and then, morning prayers are always special.”

 

Porthos smiles into Athos’s hair and listens to him talking, his voice full of hope and pleasure. The next night Athos is gone and Aramis is once up late doing something with d’Artagnan. He wakes late, though, and Aramis is back, plastered against him, snoring lightly. He wakes because Athos is crawling into bed, tired and yawning, but when Porthos looks at him also almost radiant. He looks healthy and happy and Porthos embraces him and kisses him hello.

 

“Was it wonderful?” Porthos asks.

 

“Yes. We were given the Torah again on mount Sinai in the desert,” Athos says, snuggling against Porthos’s chest. “It was magical. They did some of it in Krio, some in English, and some in Yiddish.”

 

“I will probably get up soon,” Porthos says. Athos tightens his arms around Porthos’s waist. “Or not.”

 

“You’re comfy,” Athos says, wriggling in closer. “It was a really good night, I will thank Sandra for the recommendation, the shul was so welcoming and the rabbi was really good, she knew so much and had such a good library and so many resources.”

 

“I’m glad,” Porthos says.

 

“I like it, being out all night and then coming home to you,” Athos murmurs, half asleep, rubbing his face against Porthos’s t-shirt. “Love you.”

 

“You too,” Porthos says, and waits for Athos to start snoring before extracting himself with the skill of long practise, leaving Athos and Aramis entangled and mushed together. He heads out into the city to meet up with his aunt.

 

*

“You are like your Grandmother,” Sandra decides, later They’re sat outside the magical bookshop, Porthos has a bag of books at his feet, in English and Krio, and a large ice cream. “She was a fantastic woman.”

 

“I don’t know anything about her,” Porthos admits.

 

“I will write a history for you,” Sandra says, reaching over to take Porthos’s hand. “You’ll come visit again? For longer?”

 

“Yeah, definitely,” Porthos says. “I never did, I was nervous I guess. I’ve made a lot of peace with demons recently though and I think this is good.”

 

“Yes, I think so,” Sandra says.

 

“You’re welcome in England, too,” Porthos says. “Any time, just drop by. Well, unless I’m off after dragons.”

 

Athos comes along then, from Shul, and it’s time to leave. Porthos gets held again, held tight and close, and feels the joy of knowing his family. He holds on too and then they leave. It’s not until later that he notices that Aramis is nervy and miserable, that he’s been too quiet the whole time they’ve been in Freetown, that he is distracted and that something is very wrong. Porthos sleeps in with him, and in the morning when they weigh anchor (Porthos heard someone say that and likes repeating it) they sit quietly in the mess together.

 

“You can tell me, whenever you’re ready,” Porthos says.

 

“It’s nothing,” Aramis snaps, then sighs and scrubs at his face. “Sorry. It’s frustrating. It’s nothing, really. Or it should be nothing.”

 

“Ok,” Porthos says. “Oh, come on, that’s Fleur. We’re taking the boat underwater today! We’re doing the Atlantic in three stages; under water, then up for air and to renew the stuff with sunshine or something I dunno, then under. Come on come on I wanna watch.”

 

He drags Aramis to the little room where Fleur sits and she lets him pull a lever, and there’s a mighty screeching and creaking as the the water tugs the boat further and further under. Porthos rushes to watch as the sea takes them in a rumble of bubbles and seaweed, deeper and deeper. The little room is three walls glass so they get a good view as they sink below the surface, into the inky black of the ocean. Porthos holds his breath automatically and Aramis laughs gently at him, nudging him to breathe. They sink and sink and it seems like forever, then there’s a whoosh and clank and then they’re still, and there’s not a sound. Elodie pulls a few levers and relaxes, taking a seat and getting her wand out to keep them steady.

 

“This’ll be a few hours, then we’ll go up again,” Elodie says, pulling out some knitting. “Get a good few miles under us. You might as well get some rest or read or something, there’s nothing to see or do.”

 

Porthos checks all the portholes on their way out anyway, and ventures on deck. He can only go a tiny way before he meets resistance and has to step inside again. He can’t see a thing, it’s pitch black and kind of thick, like smoke. He returns to Aramis, disappointed. He’d thought they’d see passing octopuses and whales and things. They head to the mess and find Brujon and Clermont there playing cards and cajole until they’re allowed in. Porthos wins. He always wins. Aramis accuses him of cheating but he doesn’t know all Porthos’s secrets and he can’t prove it. Porthos is feeling very pleased with himself when d’Artagnan joins them to try and gets them to play indoor quidditch with no brooms. That turns out to be kind of violent and chaotic, it reminds Porthos of muggle rugby. He prefers it to broomsticks and he runs the length of the mess, joyfully barrelling through the crew and Lucie and Brujon and diving, chucking the ball hopefully, aiming vaguely for the table they have called ‘hoop’. It has a bit of paper on it saying ‘hoop’. The ball does not go into the goal, it hits Athos, who has just come in, bounces off his head, and then hits the table. Porthos yells his victory and pulls Athos down on top of him, tussling with him until he’s subdued and lying flat on his back, blinking up at Porthos.

 

“Hello,” Porthos says, kissing Athos’s nose and bouncing back to his feet.

 

They play quidditch until the ship starts rising, then Porthos runs to the deck and watches the water swirling around them, looking for glimpses of octopuses. He sees a bewildered fish and what he is sure is a sea serpent but Aramis says is just seaweed (it is definitely a sea serpent. It had eyes). They burst out of the water into sunshine, ocean all around as far as the eye can see, water sluicing off the decks in cascades, a great rippling wave cast out around them. Porthos sits on the deck, losing his balance.

 

“Wow,” Aramis says, amused. “You really are-”

 

“Am what?” Porthos asks, rubbing his face to try and stop the world wobbling around him. He isn’t used to the movement of the deck anymore and his brain tries to compensate, sending him spinning.

 

“What’s that?” Aramis says.

 

“Fuck knows,” Porthos says. “I can’t see a thing.”

 

“There,” Aramis says, pulling Porthos’s hands away from his eyes and pointing, turning Porthos’s head so he looks in the right direction. There is something in the ocean. “It’s a man. Man overboard!”

 

Aramis shouts it a few more times but the cry’s already gone up, the crew is racing to the sides and casting out ropes and people are leaping into the water. Before Porthos has managed to orientate himself and work out what it is he’s seeing, a raft is being pulled to the side of the ship by ropes, the crewman who jumped in pulling himself up onto it and kneeling over the body of a man. Burnt and still, Porthos is sure he’s dead, but when he’s pulled aboard Agnes is sent for and there’s a great flurry of activity, so he must be alive. Aramis and Porthos head over and watch as the man’s turned, covered in cold wet sheets, as Agnes casts spells over him. His head turns and he faces Porthos and Aramis, his swollen eyes crack open and his mouth falls agape, and Aramis clutches Porthos’s arm sinking to the deck.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: student protest mentioned, no violence, past mugging where people died,

“Ok Aramis, he’s being seen to, he’s going to be fine. Sit the hell down and tell us who he is,” de Foix snaps, stopping Aramis’s pacing outside the hospital wing on the ship.

 

Aramis falls down onto the bench next to Porthos, clutching his chest dramatically. d'Artagnan, who had been next to Porthos, scoots along quickly so he doesn’t get sat on then takes to making soothing noises and stroking Aramis’s cheek, his hair. Aramis leans into the attention and Porthos snorts, giving him a tight hug instead.

 

“This is very touching,” Christoph says. “Can we please get some answers?”

 

“It’s Marsac,” Aramis whispers. Athos leans around Porthos to look at Aramis, then he and Porthos exchange a glance.

 

“And who-” de Foix starts. Porthos interrupts by clearing his throat and everyone goes quiet, which is rather pleasing really. Porthos savours it for a moment.

 

“Do you remember, about twelve years ago at the University of Savoy there was a student rally again minister Durand? A lot of foreign wizards were having student visas withdrawn, there was a crack down on non-Christian religious factions in the wizarding départements, they were restricting floo travel and portkeys?” Athos says, and doesn’t bother to wait for an answer. “The university of Savoy has a huge proportion of studying abroad students, and is in the top five wizarding institutions for divination.”

 

“We had the best teaching programmes and quidditch team, too,” Aramis mutters. Porthos grins.

 

“They didn’t like the new rules,” Porthos says. “They did sit-ins stopping floo-travel. They’d floo to a location and sit in the fire. They also found ways to locate portkeys and charmed them with a germino charm, so anyone who tried to travel that way… clever kids. Anyway, there were rallies, and the security teams turned up and there was panic, and the French auditeurs turned up. They were ok, no one got hurt and the spells they used were safe enough. As safe as they ever are anyway.”

 

“They used smoke,” Aramis whispers. “It was raining...”

 

“Aramis got involved. Him and Marsac and their friends. The auditeurs gave a warning about the smoke and one of the guys had asthma so they left, and headed back to college. They got mugged and Aramis was hurt, a couple of the guys died, Marsac was the only one who could apparate, and he could only reach Aramis.”

 

“Splinched me,” Aramis says, holding up his hand to show where his little finger is missing the top. “He saved my life. The others.  They used magic, and the muggers panicked. Marsac blamed himself about the others and he left, I haven’t seen him in years. I assumed he was dead.”

 

“And now he floats by on a fucking raft,” Christoph says. “And he just happens across you, Aramis.”

 

“What are you sayin’?” Porthos says, shifting into a position he can fight from, hand tightening on his wand on his knee, shoulder shielding Aramis.

 

“That it is a big and strange world,” de Foix says, soothingly, casting a glare Christoph’s way.

 

“I think,” Lucie says, speaking up for the first time from where she and Cho are leaning by the hospital entryway, “that we should ask Marsac.”

 

“Good idea,” Christoph says.

 

They sit in silence until Agnes comes out. She looks surprised to see so many people, Charlotte and Brujon and Clermont have gathered too in the interim. She sets her hands on her hips.

 

“He’s exhausted, dehydrated, and suffering from exposure. He is awake and can have two visitors,” Agnes says. “The rest of you can wait.”

 

Aramis gets up and goes through without waiting and as he’s holding tight to d’Artagnan, d’Artagnan trips along after him. Christoph and Lucie call Agnes over to ask her questions but she doesn’t know anything except for what she’s already said. She suspects he was on the raft for about four days, but can’t tell for sure. Porthos and Athos sit and wait, patient and calm.

 

“What do you think?” Athos whispers.

 

“No idea,” Porthos says. “I don’t believe in coincidence. But things do happen sometimes, I guess, through sheer chance…”

 

“I don’t believe it either,” Athos says.

 

“You think he was looking for Aramis?” Porthos asks, biting his lip, worried. He’s heard stories about Marsac, he’d never sounded anything but wild and a bit dangerous.

 

“We shall see,” Athos says, also tense and watchful.

 

Everyone disperses eventually and Agnes lets them into the hospital room. It’s low ceilinged, with glowing dim lights that can be lumos-ed brighter when needed, white globes that mimic muggle light bulbs. There are beds laid out, one with a crewman reading with his arm bandaged, the only other occupied one Marsac’s. Aramis is sat on the edge of that one, holding Marsac’s hand. d'Artagnan looks worried and he looks quickly away when Porthos tries to catch his eyes which only heightens Porthos’s own anxiety about this. Agnes waves her wand and a table slides out from one of the walls, by the porthole, and two chairs float over from bedsides. Athos and Porthos sit and wait patiently again, watching over Aramis.

It’s another day before the others are allowed in to ask their questions, Aramis never leaves Marsac’s bedside and Athos, Porthos and d’Artagnan sit around the table playing cards to pass the time (Porthos only cheats a little, though Athos says it’s actually a lottle when Porthos defends himself). Marsac is sat up when Christoph, de Foix and Lucie come to question him, Paul Munier stands in the entryway watching and listening, Aramis sits on the bed with Marsac. Athos, Porthos and d’Artagnan sit on the edge of the neighbouring bed to listen.

 

“I’ll tell you what happened,” Marsac says, voice rough but not the hoarse thread it had been before Agnes’s care. “In my own words, though. I’m not going to be badgered with questions, I’ll tell my story and then you can all bloody well leave me alone.”

 

“This is our ship,” de Foix points out mildly.

 

“Yeah and I’ll be leaving just as soon as Aramis stops begging me to stay,” Marsac says. Porthos shifts, angry at Marsac putting responsibility for his presence on Aramis, but Athos also shifts and Porthos obediently sits still and doesn’t jinx the little bugger. “I was on a boat.”

 

“Why?” Christoph demands.

 

“To get across a big stretch of water,” Marsac says, sardonically. “We were exploring. As I say, we were on a boat, a good distance closer to shore than you are out here. There was a storm and it was all hands to it to keep her afloat, it was tipping it down with rain and visibility was shit, the waves were bigger than we were. Great swells and deep valleys, we’d fall in and wonder if we’d ever get up again. We had good sails though. And, well, I have magic.”

 

“It was a muggle ship?” Porthos asks, surprised.

 

“What did I say about questions? If you don’t like my terms, fine,” Marsac says and goes silent. Aramis touches his shoulder and then his cheek in an intimate gesture that has Porthos stiffening. Athos raises his eyebrows, not looking at Porthos, and Porthos sighs but relaxes. “Alright. Yes, I was with a muggle crew. No it wasn’t a ship, it was a boat. Smaller. Only two masts. Are you done with the interruptions?”

 

“Yeah yeah, it was a dark and stormy night, carry on,” Porthos says. d'Artagnan stifles a laugh, turning it into a cough. Porthos smiles, pleased.

 

“It wasn’t night,” Marsac snaps, and Aramis touches his cheek again. “Fine. Yes, it was a storm, and we couldn’t see far, too much rain. I cleared the air a bit which helped and I used the wind spells I’ve often used when sailing and we thought we were out of the worst when the swell just…” Marsac trails off, as if grasping for the right words. “The water changed direction, which is impossible. Have you ever seen a hippocampus in deep water coming up to the surface in a rush? Or a whale. Any big creature, it disturbs the water. Well this was big. Bigger than anything I’ve known before in the sea and I’ve spent a bit of time out here. Except there was nothing there. It was just the effect, no cause. I assumed something from the storm, and we kept going, but the disturbances followed us. Ripples off the port bow, deep furrows to starboard, a great wake that wasn’t ours, more like a boat with a motor. And it twisted, turned, played with us. It got us in a whirlpool, just shallow but enough to keep us still, turning too, the water around us lifting and carrying us to the centre. Then, then the boat went down.”

 

“What?” d’Artagnan says.

 

“It sank,” Marsac says. “Just… sucked under in one go. I apparated and watched the water, tried to find the crew, but everything was gone. There was nothing, no debris, no disturbance, nothing. Just water. I used my wand to find some wood and made the raft you found me on and continued to search. I was still looking when you picked me up. I think I drifted.”

 

“And there’s no sign?” d’Artagnan asks.

 

“That’s the story, told you, no questions,” Marsac says, getting unsteadily to his feet. “Thanks for the rescue, I’ll be off now.”

 

“Marsac,” Aramis says, soft and low, not raising his head.

 

“Right,” Marsac says. “Aramis tells me you will all help me look for the boat.”

 

“Not likely,” Paul Munier says, stepping forward. “I suggest we get out of here if there’s a sea monster.”

 

Marsac scoffs at that and has nothing more to say and Porthos is bored and frustrated and really would very much like to hit someone so he goes up on deck and watches the water. He zones out on the waves, leaning in a daze on the rail, thinking about Marsac, about Aramis being so young and losing everyone, about Marsac leaving him like that. He, Porthos, had stuck around when his friends needed him. That is what you’re supposed to do. He doesn’t think much of Marsac for running off, even if he was only twenty. Aramis joins him, standing quietly beside him, breathing deeply.

 

“He saved me, sweetheart,” Aramis murmurs, when Porthos doesn’t say anything. Porthos stiffens. “Come on, I know you don’t like him, but… I do.”

 

“I like him fine,” Porthos says, too defensively. “People should be better to you, is all.”

 

Aramis scoffs but seems content now he knows the source of Porthos’s dislike. He leans on Porthos’s back, head resting against his shoulder, and does more deep breathing.

 

“Don’t be jealous, I still like you best,” Aramis says, laughter caught behind his teeth, stopped from escaping but just barely.

 

“I am not jealous,” Porthos says, straightening up and displacing Aramis, taking his hand instead and pulling him so they’re stood side by side.

 

“Mmhmm,” Aramis says, unconvinced.

 

“He left you,” Porthos says. “Shouldn’t of done that.”

 

“Maybe not,” Aramis says. “We were young. Did you never put your own well being ahead of your friends? What about when Nobby was in hospital, did you never leave him alone when he needed or wanted – sorry.”

 

“I did leave him alone, yeah, but I looked to his care and made sure he had support, and he had family and was in his own country at home, he wasn’t on his own in a foreign place in the middle of a dangerous time with no support and his friends hadn’t just all died,” Porthos says. “Marsac shouldn’t have left you. Not saying he shouldn’t have left, but that’s not what he did, is it? Vanished, ignored your owls, let you believe he was dead. Fucker.”

 

“I may have one or two questions,” Aramis admits. “But, he’s my friend. I am… really glad to see him.”

 

“Fine and good. I don’t like him for leaving you,” Porthos says. “It’s ok, I’m not gonna make a fuss. I’ll be polite and make nice.”

 

“I’ve seen you ‘make nice’, charming you are not,” Aramis says, but he’s amused again, leaning into Porthos’s side.

 

“Christ, go get some sleep and stop using me as your own personal leaning post,” Porthos says, pushing him gently then gathering him close to hug him. “Love you.”

 

“Mm, I know,” Aramis says, not giving any indication that he’s going to stop using Porthos as his own personal leaning post any time soon, rather snuggling closer and leaning more.

 

Porthos watches the waves again, the hypnotic rise and fall of them. He frowns, noticing the slight shift in the pattern of it, smiles when something slides beneath the surface, big and animalistic. Then the ship tips a little and their direction changes, running with the tug of the waves.

 

“I love the sea,” Porthos says.

 

“I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,” Aramis says, taking a deep breath for the next line but getting dryly interrupted from behind.

 

“I left my shirt and trousers there, I wonder if they’re dry?” Athos says, coming over to lean with them, slapping Aramis’s shoulder. “Bloody Masefield. Nash every time, for me.”

 

“And all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by,” Aramis says, dramatically, leaning on Porthos and facing Athos.

 

The waves shift again and whatever’s near them twists, turning the ship’s nose more thoroughly. Porthos frowns and tries to get a glimpse of it as it comes rising out in a great wave, pushing the ship to turn.

 

“Uh oh,” Porthos says, grinning, looking along the rail and seeing crew men running across the decks, pulling on ropes. They shout to one another as another great wave swells and tips them, a great furrow of water rising around them like a rope of waves. Munier calls instructions and comes to the prow of the ship where they’re stood. “Here we go again!”

 

Another wave, another body of swell and a twist, the ship turning.

 

“It’s what Marsac described!” Aramis cries, running back along the deck toward Munier.

 

Porthos curses and summons a buoy, waves his wand in a twirl to send the anchor deeper, stretching the cable, thickening it, searching it through the water for the sea bed. He doesn’t want to lose this beast but he’s seen Munier- he’s all about safety. Porthos jabs his wand, another cascade of spells tripping off his tongue to construct a platform, planks and metal flicking out around the buoy, then Munier is calling his crew and they’re shooting off, away from the furrows and ripples.

 

“We can’t outrun it!” Someone shouts.

 

“It thinks we’re a whale,” Lucie says, coming out on deck her hair a mess around her. “Cho was looking at charts, it was following a whale migration route but got sidetracked and here it is. We pinned out where the reports fitting Marsac’s reported incidents and – never mind how we worked it out! It thinks we’re whales!”

 

Porthos squints into the water and tries to think really really hard about what a whale might look like. Marsac recognised this as a beast from its effect, it should work the other way too. Depending on how the beast recognises its prey, but it was after boats so it can’t take much. He makes a shape in the water and sends it off on a course breaking from the ship, then holds his breath. The creature follows the decoy and Porthos races for the back of the ship to watch.

 

“Let’s find out what that was,” he says to Athos, who’s come running after him. “Munier! Can you anchor here? It won’t be back for you, promise. You’re too big anyway, it only chased because you ran.”

 

de Foix comes rushing down the ship grinning widely and Munier agrees to anchor, only for half an hour and if the beast returns he’s off. Porthos grabs de Foix and Athos and they apparate onto his platform at the buoy. They all use bubblehead charms and Porthos calls his decoy back towards them. It comes with a great wave of water, gives up on the decoy and dives. Porthos and Athos and de Foix follow, relying on the play of light, the disturbance of the water. The deeper they go the more opaque it becomes, Porthos grabs a spine as it becomes almost visible and shouts for joy as he shoots toward the sea bed. Athos and de Foix use their wands to get a grip too and they cling as the beast careens to the bottom of the sea and then comes to a sudden and complete stop. Porthos lets go the spine, the tip sharp and scratching at him. He swims the length of the beast, examining it: it’s massive.

 

It's cold down here and the beast is still, only Athos and de Foix, making their own explorations, stirring things. Porthos watches the spines and shape as it appears and disappears, shimmering and shivering, light coming only dimly and rarely, wavering with the water. There’s something at the back of his mind, groping for him. Something about what this reminds him of. The beast rolls slowly and the heavily armoured back gives way and there: frost; ice crystals on hardly formed ice, as water freezes, frost patterns on the window. He gasps and touches it, the soft belly, and the creature senses him. It goes still and there’s a rush of warmth and it vanishes. Porthos gropes for it but it’s gone. They apparate back to the ship.

 

 

*

 

“We could tag it,” Cho suggests, yawning.

 

It’s late. They’re sat up in de Foix’s cabin; Cho, Lucie, Charlotte, Athos and Porthos, de Foix. They’ve been going over books and charts, reports and stories, all afternoon and evening. They’ve recently stopped their reading and eager exploration of what this might be to argue about whether to stay here and find out or continue to look for ice dragons.

 

“Maybe this is an ice dragon,” Porthos suggests, head on his arm on the table. He’s tired and kind of wants to go to bed but he really wants the ship to stay and see what this beast is so he sticks around to advocate that course of action.

 

“No,” Lucie says. “They don’t come this far north.”

 

“If they even exist,” Porthos mutters, reaching out to rest a hand on Athos’s thigh. Athos is sound asleep, head tipped against the back of his chair. He hadn’t cared one way or another what they did next. “We know that this exists and you can’t identify it, it might be something new.”

 

“We can tag it,” Cho says again, stretching. She’s ready for bed, too, clearly.

 

“Let’s tag it,” de Foix says, clapping his hands. “We’ll see if it does anything.”

 

“We should probably help her find whales again,” Porthos says. “She’s probably hungry by now, all that wood in her and no whale blubber.”

 

“‘Her’?” Charlotte asks, raising her eyebrows. “I agree with Porthos, we should study this.”

 

“Tag,” Cho says.

 

“Probably should either help it back to wherever it’s from, or report it,” Lucie says. “Henri, I’ll let you decide for me, I’m going to bed.”

 

She gets up and kisses her brother’s hair before wandering off. Cho looks enviously after her but stays where she is. Cho wants to find her dragons. It makes Porthos fond and he sits up to smile at her.

 

“Tagging and guiding her home,” Porthos says. “Toward our dragons, eh?”

 

“Maybe she’s migrating somewhere not-Antarctic,” Cho says.

 

“Guiding her isn’t really a possibility when we don’t know where she’s going,” Charlotte says. “It.”

 

“We can work it out from the chart. Look, she was following a migratory route that went below the South African Cape, in an arch. Probably all that muggle smog making global warming, changing tides, confused her. She’s off course. We can do geometry and work that shit out,” Porthos says.

 

“We can ‘do geometry’,” Charlotte says, shaking her head.

 

“I could work it out,” Cho says, holding up her hands, giving in. “We worked out that she was hunting whales, we can find out where she was heading. Tagging and guiding her home.”

 

“Good,” de Foix says. “Now everyone bugger off, I’m tired.”

 

Cho rushes eagerly after Lucie and Porthos gets up, scooping Athos out of the chair, Athos loops his arms around Porthos’s neck and mumbles sleepily. They leave Charlotte and de Foix to a last drink and Porthos heads to Aramis’s rooms. Athos kisses at his neck and wriggles a bit, clearly more awake than Porthos thought.

 

“Behave or I’ll drop you,” Porthos grumbles, making Athos laugh, pressing his face into Porthos’s shoulder.

 

Porthos tucks his fingers into Athos’s pocket to get at his wand to open Aramis’s door and then stops. Aramis and d’Artagnan are both there, both up, a lamp lit; Marsac is sat on the bed, clearly caught up in some arguement.

 

“...and that’s none of your- -” Marsac cuts himself off and glares at Porthos.

 

Porthos sets Athos on his feet and shuts the door behind them.

 

“Apparently, neither are you,” d’Artagnan says, between grit teeth. “A friend wouldn’t let Aramis think he was dead.”

 

Marsac makes a quick movement off the bed toward d’Artagnan but just hits Porthos’s chest. Porthos looks down at him, Athos’s wand held loose but sure under Marsac’s chin, Marsac’s wand held in his other hand, equally loose. Equally sure. Marsac stares defiantly up at him, breathing hard. Marsac snarls and snatches his wand out of Porthos’s grip, crashing out of the cabin, slamming the door behind him. Porthos looks at Aramis, also sat on the bed, head hanging, elbows on his knees.

 

“What was that about?” Porthos asks.

 

“Just a difference of opinion,” Aramis says, low but steady. Porthos and Athos exchange a glance then both look at d’Artagnan who lets out a little squeak.

 

“Right,” Porthos says. “We don’t keep secrets, ‘mis.”

 

Aramis looks up at him as much defiance as Marsac in his eyes, and also as much despair. Aramis’s lip twists.

 

“Oh yes, Belgard?” Aramis spits the name.

 

“If you want to be a brat,” Porthos says, shrugging. It’s true he didn’t say anything about his father for a long time but that wasn’t a secret. He never out-right lied about it and he always admitted that his father had been a cruel man whose name was well known, that he used his mother’s name for those reasons. Aramis gets to his feet.

 

“Did you know about this?” Aramis asks Porthos, gesturing to the shut door, to d’Artagnan.

 

“What is ‘this’?” Porthos asks.

 

“What he told me. Is it true?” Aramis says.

 

“Marsac says, they were followed home by an auditeur, to make sure they got there safe- some of them were only eighteen and Marsac asked for help getting them out of the protest crowds and home safe, but he didn’t help when they got hurt. That the auditeur at the university of Savoy was our own Jean Treville,” d’Artagnan says, softly. “Now he wants Aramis to go to South Africa with him and then back to England, to find Treville.”

 

“And then what?” Porthos says.

 

“Find the truth, god damn it!” Aramis shouts, into Porthos’s face. “He killed my friends! My lover, my good friends, lost me Marsac! I want the truth from him, I want him to face what he did.”

 

“Do as you like,” Porthos says. “I’m not going with you. I don’t believe it, either, and nor would you if you knew Treville better.”

 

“I know him well enough,” Aramis says, lip twisting again. “I know he was friends with a Belgard, good enough friends to imprison your mother and necessitate an escape that lost her her life, that he never bothered to find or help- -”

 

Porthos has heard Aramis angry before and knows that his temper has a sharp tongue, but these things don’t sound like those. Aramis is better at aiming. Porthos has made peace with this, with Treville. Aramis knows that.

 

“Sounds like Marsac,” Porthos says, interrupting, watching d’Artagnan’s face and catching the small wince.

 

He nods and leaves Aramis’s cabin, heading instead for his own. If Aramis wants to have a go and take his anger out he’ll have to do it on someone else or wait for the morning. Athos follows and d’Artagnan trails miserably after them. Porthos hears Aramis yell and throw something, then silence.

 

“I’ll stay with him,” d’Artagnan says. “He asked me not to tell, sorry.”

 

“Leave him,” Athos says. “He can come find Porthos if he wants to, he knows that. Or me.”

 

d’Artagnan nods and looks miserable, shuffling his feet about going to his own cabin. Athos sighs and pushes d’Artagnan gently in that direction, kissing Porthos’s cheek before following him.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And another, because this is supposed to be today's chapter and it is just about still today and it is ready so. 
> 
> ALSO: the whale thing! my friend Glim from not-this-fandom helped me with the whale stuff she apparently knows everything about whale musk (lololol she's never gonna read this fic so I can say that and she'll NEVER KNOW). Ambergris is a thing in perfume which is what she really knows about, and that we don't use real stuff from whales any more because you know killing or damaging whales for perfume is a bit evil.anyway she told me about perfume and whales and false stuff and helped :) (also she's lovely and writes lovely fic and if anyone has a slightly unhealthy adoration for skinny Steve from Avengers you should hit her up, and she writes the most beautiful Merlin fic so yu know, that too.) 
> 
> WARNINGS: Aramis and Porthos argue, spoilery warning at the bottom

 

Porthos heads to his cabin, after the others have said goodnight, glad to be alone for a while to brood. He lies down on his back and thinks about Aramis, Marsac, the great beast lying somewhere beneath them. Cho thinks it reacts to the temperature, that its hide is some kind of ice reaction. He dozes, half dreaming half awake, feeling the beast shift with the sea, watching the frost crystalise over its spines and belly, watching for its twist, looking for its face.

 

“Porthos.”

 

He wakes a little and blinks his eyes open, tilting his head to see the doorway. Aramis is hovering there. Porthos lifts his blankets in invitation and Aramis scurries over and dives under with him, hands and feet cold enough to make Porthos yelp and try to escape.

 

“You’re freezing!” Porthos gasps, squirming.

 

“Fussy,” Aramis mutters, feeling under Porthos’s pillow and casting a slightly pathetic warming charm. “Your wand hates me.”

 

“Nope,” Porthos says, hitching his hips to illustrate his hilarious pun. Aramis whacks his thigh and buries reluctant, snorting laughter in Porthos’s chest. Porthos grins and scuffs Aramis’s hair, affectionate. “You good?”

 

“Yes. Sorry,” Aramis whispers, sobering. “Marsac… I need to know.”

 

“Treville did work in France, he was an auditeur,” Porthos says. “He might have been there. He did not set out to hurt anyone, though.”

 

“Do you think he knows I was there?”

 

“If he was there and some of what Marsac says is true… yes. I think Treville knows,” Porthos says, rubbing Aramis’s shoulders. “He’s no more whole than the rest of us, love. He has his own unhealthy ways of doing things and reacting to things, his own selfishnesses.”

 

“You’re too accepting.”

 

“Nah. It makes me angry, too. That he didn’t tell me for so long, that he… but, I chose a long time ago to forgive him and accept that he’s not perfect, that he hasn’t always done the right thing, that sometimes he,” Porthos stops. “I dunno.”

 

“I feel so, so angry,” Aramis whispers.

 

“Yeah, feelings aren’t the same as actions though, are they?” Porthos says.

 

“I know. Impulse control,” Aramis grumbles, and Porthos chuckles. Aramis has terrible impulse control. “I am that meme, you know? You and Athos leave and I cut all the sleeves off my shirts because you’re ninety percent of my impulse control. Marsac’s all impulse.”

 

“He’s angry,” Porthos says.

 

“Yeah. He’s going, whether I’m with him or not. Will you write to Treville and warn him?”

 

“Nope,” Porthos says, pleased when Aramis relaxes a bit. “Let him go. Stay with us.”

 

“I… I don’t know. I want to know the truth,” Aramis says.

 

“There isn’t one truth,” Porthos says. “Not to emotionally blackmail you, but it’ll hurt me if you go.”

 

“I know,” Aramis says. “It’ll eat at me.”

 

“Then write him,” Porthos says. “Can we sleep? I’m tired. I wanna dream about sea monsters.”

 

Aramis laughs and wraps himself more around Porthos. They sleep like that, somewhere in the night Porthos turns on his side and they get a bit more tangled. They wake up late, to Athos climbing in with them and rocking the bed. Porthos turns over, still mostly asleep, nudging against Athos until Athos puts his arms around Porthos and then wriggling until Aramis also puts his arms around Porthos, then he lets out a contented sigh and goes back to sleep. When he wakes it’s with no arms around him. He makes a bad tempered sound so everyone in the vicinity know this is Not Acceptable.

“I have coffee,” Athos says, from somewhere. “Munier says there’s a storm coming and we should move but Lucie wants to go get this thing tagged which means we’ve gotta find it. Cho thinks we can lure it back to the migration route it was following, then track it back to its home.”

 

Porthos makes a muffled sound that, he feels, conveys easily that it is early and he is tired and Athos is talking too much. Athos laughs.

 

“Coffee,” Athos repeats.

 

Porthos sits up with his eyes closed and waves his hand until a mug of coffee is pressed into it. He sips, and then leans, hoping someone will catch him. Athos makes a surprised sound as Porthos falls against his bony shoulder. He hugs Porthos, though, which is acceptable.

 

“How come you’re so grumpy, anyway?” Athos asks. “You’re the only one of us even vaguely a morning person. It’s nearly afternoon, by the way.”

 

“I am sleepy,” Porthos says. Sipping his coffee. He’s not really that sleepy anymore but he’s going to indulge himself. “Where’s ‘mis?”

 

“He went to sit with Marsac,” Athos says.

 

Porthos nods and finishes his coffee before going to draw Aramis away under the guise of finding the monster. Lucie and Cho come with them, this time; him and Aramis and them. They use the whale ruse again but this time the water remains calm. They stand on deck, Cho has her hands on her hips and squinting toward the dark clouds.

 

“Maybe that’ll draw it out?” Lucie suggests. “It seems to like storms.”

 

“Don’t suppose we have whale jerky lying around?” Aramis says, leaning over to look at the water. “Or whale steaks? Or ambergris?”

 

“Amber-what?” Porthos says.

 

“It’s a perfume ingredient,” Aramis says. “Made from whales. Or synthetic now, usually, because the whales are in danger and we’re all ethically conscious.”

 

“Super woke,” Porthos says. “As my students used to say. I could probably find some kind of stinky whale-ness from potions ingredients on board.”

 

He and Cho go, leaving Lucie and Aramis to watch the storm. Christoph joins them and turns out to be a dab hand at potions. Between the three of them (after a few mishaps but they only caught a small table on fire) they manage to make something that Cho declares ‘close enough’. It’s a flakey kind of lichen that’s left in the cauldron, floating like scum on the surface. They lug it up to the deck and find Lucie and Aramis, and set to pouring the stuff into the sea and multiplying it, turning it into a vague whale shape and shadow, hoping the scent and shape together do what a shape a;one could not. The sea almost swallows it, beginning to swell and push the ship around. Porthos suggests they apparate to the buoy again so the beast doesn’t come for Munier’s precious ship and Lucie, Cho and Aramis agree.

 

They stand on the small bit of decking as the sea grows restless, Porthos and Lucie keep their wands drawn, better at charms than the others, and keep the platform from being washed away. Aramis keeps the whale-ish circling them as the waves get bigger and bigger. As the sky darkens and thunders a wave washes right over them and nearly washes them off, leaving them coughing and all of them with their wands out, crouched on the small surface, hanging on where they can. Porthos manages a transfiguration to the platform so there are handholds to grip onto. Just in time as well; with the next wave comes a disturbance that has the platform spinning, a rush of water cascading over them again, the water twisting oddly.

 

“Here it is!” Aramis cries, casting a bubble head charm on himself.

 

“We need to get it to dive!” Cho calls. “It reacts to the cold but we can’t spell the entire ocean, the closer to the sea bed it is the easier we can reveal it and find where to place the tag!”

 

Porthos has the whale shape dive and casts a freezing charm over what water he can. There’s a shiver of frost and a spine of ice appears, they grab on and then they’re diving after the whale, deeper and deeper until there’s no sight and only deep plump echoing sound. Porthos disperses the whale and the beast circles, looking for it, Porthos can feel the great muscled body stirring the water. Cho and Lucie have a charm ready and cast it, chilling the water further and further. Frost spreads over the beast, revealing it as the water chills. It quiets in the cold and goes stiller, as if aware of its visibility. Porthos lets go and swims along the frosting patterns, searching for the head. It’s a way away, past surprising shoulders and lizardish legs, nose in the sea bed, one great eye open, filmed over and also patterned with frost. It blinks and Porthos blinks back, hanging before it, the frost and film dispel a moment and it sees him, then is blind again. It shuts it eye and raises its snout, trailing searching fronds like antennae through the water; whiskers, sensing. Porthos is still and it stills too. The head turns suddenly and a gush of water shoots under its chin, it twists and flails sharply, sending Porthos upwards away from it as it speeds through the water away, warming as it goes, an echoing hollow sound calling out.

 

Porthos watches it disappear and stays still, joined soon by the others. Lucie indicates that they should return to the surface and Porthos follows, climbing out onto the platform and sitting, panting. Aramis kneels by him and grips his shoulder. The storm is really around them, now, rain is beating down and the waves are too big to be charmed - the platform is set adrift with the next big one and flung outward, the buoy flung away in the other direction. Aramis is looking around, searching for the ship. Porthos looks, too, and cannot see it.

 

“Bugger,” Lucie says. “Can anyone here apparate blind? I don’t know the ship well enough and we have no guidance, we were relying on knowing the relative positions.”

 

“Cho can,” Porthos says. “Aramis. But they can’t side-along us.”

 

“Can’t you? It seems the kind of thing you’d be good at,” Lucie says. Porthos shakes his head.

 

Another wave comes, cutting off any answer he might have made. He can’t charm them safe but he does a smaller spell, lifting them onto the wave so they ride it rather than being sunk. They surf along, Aramis unable to help yelling for joy at the thrill. Porthos laughs and clutches Aramis’s arm, a little afraid adrift in this place. They can’t see much, just the lift and crash of the sea, the trembling thunder, the spasms of bright lightning. Then there’s a great explosion in the sky, a firework of sparks.

 

“It’s Athos!” Porthos yells. “Sparks! Go there, Lucie!”

 

Lucie and Cho go, spinning on the spot and sliding off toward the sea but vanishing before they fall in. Aramis stays with Porthos, frowning at him.

 

“You need more?” Aramis asks.

 

“I dunno,” Porthos says, staring in the direction of the sparks.

 

“Ok. I’ll do it, then. Hold onto me and think really, really hard about Athos. If I splinch you I’m not coming back for you so you better focus,” Aramis says.

 

“Thanks,” Porthos mutters.

 

“Think about Athos.”

 

Porthos shuts his eyes and holds tight to Aramis, burying his face in Aramis’s shoulder. He can smell coffee, feel Athos’s gentle hand on his arm, see his smile. Athos laughs and Porthos holds onto that, the shape and warmth of him. There’s a gut-wrenching yank and then he’s falling onto the deck of the ship, lying flat on his back.

 

“Ow,” comes a muffled sound from beneath him. He rolls off what turns out to be Athos, looking squashed and grumpy. “Ouch.”

 

“Sorry,” Porthos mutters, sitting up and looking for Aramis.

 

Aramis is stood over them looking amused and far too put together for a man who’s been to the bottom of the ocean, stuck in a storm, and just did a dangerous bit of magic. Porthos scowls. Aramis helps Athos then Porthos up and claps them each on a shoulder, standing between them.

 

“Accuracy was difficult,” Aramis says. “Did you know our Porthos is terrible at apparition?”

 

“Yes,” Athos says. “He once-”

 

“It’s not story time,” Porthos snaps, making them both laugh. “Did we get the tag?”

 

“Under the chin. I did it,” Aramis says, proudly. “Lucie said where and I got to do it.”

 

“Congratulations,” Porthos says.

 

“Come on!” d’Artagnan yells, sticking his head out from inside. “It’s moving! Let’s go to the front and watch!”

 

They follow and find Cho and Charlotte stood with Munier, wands trained on the waves some way ahead, the ship navigating through the storm. The sailors on the deck around them also have their wands out and are calming the water near them or pushing the waves aside, Porthos can catch glimpses of other crewmen, near the sails, directing the wind. He can feel the thrum of the magic in the air. It’s kind of thrilling, standing at the helm (if that’s what this is called), looking out, following the invisible beast. The beast moves fast and so do they, speeding unnaturally through the storm, scudding like clouds rather than a big, heavy ship. Porthos hangs onto Aramis’s arm again as they go, flushed and excited but kind of on edge about being in the storm.

 

“It’s slowing!” Lucie calls from above them somewhere, where she’s been tracking the tag. “It’s gone still!”

 

Munier calls for them to anchor and be still also and the ship goes calm as the crewmen create a bubble in which they can work, tying up the rigging and pulling in the sails. Porthos retreats below deck before they let the magic go and set them back into the storm. He trusts the crew to do what they know, he’s hungry. He changes out of the wetsuit and gets dry and into joggers and a jumper then heads for the mess. d’Artagnan’s there looking gloomy so Porthos sits with him and grins widely, radiating happiness, until it annoys d’Artagnan.

 

“I think Marsac is up to something,” d’Artagnan says, whacking Porthos’s shoulder. “He’s asked Munier and de Foix if he can stay and they’ve agreed. Aramis is over the moon. Thinks he’s giving up his crusade to assassinate Treville.”

 

“To- - to…” Porthos says, freezing. “Excuse me?”

 

“...shit.”

 

“‘Shit’ is damned right,” Porthos growls, getting to his feet and stalking out.

 

The ship is rocking with the storm now but Porthos doesn’t notice it, he charges down the corridors toward Marsac’s cabin, d’Artagnan racing after him calling out. Porthos flings open the door and finding the room empty heads for Aramis’s, and then up on deck where he finds Marsac leaning on a stick talking with Aramis and de Foix. Porthos goes for him, pushing him against the railings, forearm against his chest to keep him pinned. Aramis calls out his name but Porthos ignores it. Then he realises he has nothing to say to Marsac and lets go, lets Marsac drop to the deck, and spins on Aramis.

 

“You weren’t gonna say anything,” Porthos says, making for Aramis.

 

“Ah. d’Artagnan told you Marsac’s plans,” Aramis says, infuriatingly calm.

 

“Yeah,” Porthos says, as derisively as he can. “He might’ve mentioned that you and that wretch decided to act as judge, jury and executioner and kill Treville. My friend, Aramis, my family!”

 

“I was angry,” Aramis says, lightly. “We changed our minds.”

 

“You were gonna kill him,” Porthos says. “Murder someone. What the fuck?!”

 

“What would you know?” Marsac says. “I asked him to help and he let our friends die.”

 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake! It was a violent encounter in an alley, not like he had control over it. You were adults,” Porthos says.

 

“Porthos,” Aramis says.

 

“No, no. What do I know?” Porthos says. “You’re right. Oh how you have suffered. Fuck you both. Next time you want to murder my friends, watch your fucking backs. Captain Munier, these men have collaborated to commit murder. Surely that necessitates them being locked up.”

 

“I will lock up Marsac. Aramis came to me after Marsac woke and told me of his suspicions and what Marsac planned. He asked that I not lock Marsac up, if you want to press charges you can press, I’ll put him in the brig and sail for South Africa where he can face the charges at the ministry there,” Munier says.

 

“Do it,” Porthos bites out and spins on his heel, storming back inside, crashing to his cabin and throwing himself onto the bed, scribbling a quick angry note to Treville. He heads to Athos’s to borrow his owl and finds Athos waiting for him with Lucie and Cho.

 

“You have to let us chase this thing,” Cho says, without pausing.

 

“We can’t go back to Cape Town,” Lucie says. “My brother agrees and he’s known Treville longer than you, cares about him just as much.”

 

Porthos ignores them and attaches his letter to Aristophanes’ leg, sending her out into the storm, then sits on Athos’s bed.

 

“Fine,” Porthos says. “d’Artagnan watches Marsac, though.”

 

“He was anyway,” Athos murmurs.

 

“Keeping secrets,” Porthos spits, bitterness curdling.

 

“You were unkind to Aramis,” Athos says, mildly. “Do you really think that his hurt was nothing, because it compares to yours?”

 

“No of course not,” Porthos says. “I am angry. What do I know? Fuck Marsac.”

 

“I think Aramis has,” Athos says, still mildly.

 

“Oh, fuck,” Porthos says, and rests his head in his hands. Aramis always did go silly over people he slept with. Always got it all tangled up with love. There’s a tap on the door and Aramis slips in. “Sorry.”

 

“Oh,” Aramis says. “I thought you were somewhere else.”

 

“Well I’m not, I’m here,” Porthos says. “Sorry for belittling your experience, I don’t really think any of that.”

 

“Fine,” Aramis says. “You’ll let him out?”

 

“Yeah,” Porthos says. Lucie and Cho go.

 

“You could try trusting him, or me,” Aramis says. “He was angry, that’s all.”

 

“Treville’s not perfect but he’s been family to me and you considered murdering him, I am not gonna be calm about that!” Porthos says. “You didn’t even tell me he was in danger.”

 

“He wasn’t,” Aramis says. “I wouldn't have let-”

 

“Let?” Porthos says. “He’s got you running after your own tail, ‘mis. He’s got you to lie to me, outright lie, keep things from me that you know will hurt me.”

 

“He’s… special,” Aramis whispers. “He saved my life.”

 

“Yeah well,” Porthos says. “Fine. Do whatever you need to, keep what you must from me, but just don’t expect me to be ok with everything.”

 

“Are you done arguing?” Athos says. “I was going to go and find out what Charlotte and the others have found out about the beast.”

 

“It’s big, it’s pretty, it’s only visible when cold. It’s not an ice dragon but it might lead us to other ice beasties and thus ice dragons,” Porthos says. “What more do you wanna know? I’m going to have a sulk-sleep.”

 

“I’ll go with you,” Aramis says, reaching out to touch Athos’s chest, looking up for a kiss.

 

Porthos grumbles and face plants in the pillows, leaving them to be affectionate and terrible. They leave talking about the sea monster and Porthos is left feeling a bit pathetic. Until d’Artagnan sneaks in to play cards with him. d’Artagnan even lets him cheat a lot and brings cake.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS cont.: porthos finds out that Marsac was gonna go murder Treville and is super angry and belittles their trauma stuff a little bit?


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: see end, can't be arsed to generalise so spoilers

Porthos stands at the prow of the ship as the sea calms and the wind settles. They’ve been chasing the beast for two days and have been lead on an odd, disarrayed journey. To begin they were half-leading it, laying suggestions of whale scent or shape heading back toward the migratory route, then once near they’d stopped that and left it to its own devices. It ate a whale and then the water kind of did this awesome vibrating thing, all trembling with echoes like the whole ocean had happy giggles. Now the beast is meandering, a wavering, twisting way that has their ship tacking against the wind and the crewmen using more magic than they might otherwise to make course corrections. This past day they’ve dropped back a bit to follow less closely and have been doing less of the loops but Porthos has been tracking the beast and it’s still curling and twisting, almost dancing. As he watches now, wand out to see the beast’s movements, the beast stills and sinks deeper into the water as a school of whales appears far on the horizon. 

Porthos leans on the rails and watches the whales, surfacing and sinking, keeping close until suddenly something breaks them apart and one gets edged off, a tide or echo confusing it. The single whale heads in the wrong direction and the water around it comes up and curls, and then there’s a wave, a snap, and the whale is sucked beneath the surface and is gone. The ocean vibrates and the school speeds up, sinking deeper and also vanishing; clearly this is a predator they know to avoid. The beast sinks to the bottom of the ocean and moves slower, in a straighter line, gradually stilling. Munier calls for the anchor to be weighed or something and they also still, coming to rest on the calm ocean. It’s starting to get cooler, out in the middle of the sea, no land in sight, further South. Porthos wraps his cloak around him and shivers. 

“Cold?” Aramis asks, leaning beside him. 

“I’m a wizard, I can just…” Porthos waves his wand and a waft of heat gusts over them before vanishing. “I like feeling it, I guess. Closer to the Antarctic, it’s exciting.”

“Did you see it eat the whale?” Aramis asks, Porthos nods. “Cho and Lucie have decided it’s going to be called an Ice Lizard.”

“That’s a stupid name,” Porthos decides. “Winter Chameleon.”

“Ok that’s cooler,” Aramis agrees. There’s quiet between them for a moment, a little awkward, then Aramis sighs and wraps an arm around Porthos’s shoulders. “Treville wrote to me.”

“And?” Porthos asks. 

“He was there,” Aramis says. “He doesn’t want to tell me much over letter, wants to talk when we go back. I can’t help that I don’t trust him much, but I do trust you and should have thought more about that. Marsac’s choice to stay was a relief, I’m not sure what I’d have done… but I trust you and… yeah.”

“Ok,” Porthos says. “

“Trev says Hedwig and Gringot are good, Gringot is getting into lots of trouble.”

“Yeah?”

“Caught a niffler the other day. Constance saved it,” Aramis says. “Shall we go get food?”

Porthos decides that is a brilliant idea, after all the beast isn’t much worth watching at the moment.

 

*

“She’s moving! Jesus fuck she’s fast!” Cho shouts, running across the deck, pulling Lucie after her, against other rails and leaning over to watch. 

Porthos follows more safely and sanely, the deck bucking under him as they try to keep up with the beast, cutting through the water at a speed impossible without the magic filling the sails. He, Cho and Lucie hang over the rails watching as the water rises and ices over. As they come further south and the sea cools the Winter Chameleon becomes more visible, either by the ice on it or by the disturbances as it heats the water deep down. Charlotte, the only one of them who’s actually academic enough to shut themselves in a room and study instead of getting ridiculously excited, had tied the creature to the Demiguise and the Hippocampus, some kind of sea creature that probably evolved from cross-breeding. It’s an oddity, not something new but an amalgam. Charlotte thinks it might be unique but Cho says to have evolved there must be more than one, which sounds about right. Porthos can’t look away as the spines rise up out of the water, glittering with ice, falling and breaking away in the warmer water, solidifying in the freezing air, shifting and changing. It’s beyond anything he’s ever seen before. They’re reaching closer to the Antarctic and have lookouts, now, high in the rigging, keeping watch for ice floats and bergs, watching the water for dangers. It suddenly makes sense why Munier brought such a large crew. 

“Can we get pictures, do you think?” Cho wonders. 

Which is how Porthos ends up in the water in a wetsuit with Lucie and Brujon, and a camera in a bubble, a muggle video camera care of Athos also protected, and a whole bunch of odd spells that might or might not clear up the pictures. He shoots freezing water around them and shivers, cold sinking into him, training the camera on the spot they think the Winter Chameleon is coming. They’ve apparated ahead of it, hoping to catch it as it passes. Brujon has a muggle one-use underwater camera, Lucie’s got the good camera and her wand, hanging in the water, breath heating misting up her bubble charm. Porthos casts a warming spell limiting it to the water around them, further chilling the water further out, Brujon adds his spells too. They wait, Lucie’s hair freezing at the ends where it wanders like seaweed fronds, Brujon muttering quiet complaints about the cold, the light quality oddly clear, blue and green and white around them, fracturing in the ice. 

It comes all at once, the face and whiskers first bursting into their frozen sphere, roaring heat and air bubbles, body a quick flicker of scales and spines and twisting, water around it like long pieces of fabric, wavering, great and powerful. Porthos gasps and turns the camera as it passes, hoping he has pressed the right buttons, hoping he’s getting this. Lucie clears the water around them as the beast passes and it flickers, visible and invisible, freezing and heating, and then it’s gone. They apparate back and Cho and Lucie rush inside to see what they’ve got on film, Brujon off to find Clermont. Porthos goes to take a hot shower then comes back up onto deck to watch the Chameleon again, enraptured by it. He leans and listens idly to the crew calling instructions back and forth, relaying Munier’s orders, shouting jokes, laughing at the younger members. Porthos listens, smiling, eyes on the water, and catches a familiar voice below him. A deck below. He leans over to look and sees Aramis and Marsac sat with blankets around them, hot mugs steaming. It must be cold, Porthos stopped liking it as the water filled more with ice and has got into the habit of heating his clothes and wearing gloves and can’t quite tell anymore. 

“I don’t know what I planned,” Marsac says, his voice is still harsh and cracked, Porthos thinks perhaps it’s a permanent thing. “I can’t forgive. He killed our friends Aramis!”

“Yeah, and then you left me with their bodies, alone, to face the police, their families. To tell them why I had survived when no one else had. Alone among the dead. It was terrifying in that bubble, dying, but you know what was worse? The aftermath, sitting with Olivier’s sister, Francais’ mother, Jackson’s brother. Mourning with them when they wished, all of them wished, and I wished, too… that I had died and someone else, anyone else, had lived. There was no one there who was glad it was me who had survived. No one. I had no friends, no family, nothing. And every time it rained, every single time, it was like being back there and everyone dying again and I was always alone,” Aramis says. “I don’t remember much from then, I’ve blocked so much of it out. I remember an auditeur sitting with me through the interviews. I remember him, I never knew who he was I don’t… I can’t find a face, just… warmth. Support. I think it was Treville.”

“Aramis!”

“I know, he killed our friends,” Aramis says. “But I am going to hear him out about why he didn’t intervene. It’s not like the only explanation is that he didn’t care or didn’t try. It isn’t definitive that he just left us there.”

“I talked to some people,” Marsac says stubbornly. “I won’t forgive... I don’t know what to do, though. I’ve spent years chasing this down, trying to find things out. I don’t know how not to go and hunt him, Aramis. I want him dead, and I can’t stop myself wanting that.”

“You need help,” Aramis says. “You should talk to someone. Therapy, I don’t know. I can’t help with that.”

“I will stay here, with you, and follow your lead. But when we return to England and you see Treville I want to be there,” Marsac says. 

“If you must,” Aramis says. “Hey, M?”

“Yeah?” 

“We’re hunting dragons.”

Marsac remains silent and they head inside, Porthos feels bad for listening in but also relieved. He’s not going to stop watching Marsac but he sounds more sad and conflicted, more like he’s hurting, than vengeful or ready to shoot off and kill someone. Porthos trusts he’ll stay with Aramis and that’s good. He goes back to watching the beast and Aramis complains about the cold, heading inside. Aramis himself emerges ten minutes later searching for Porthos to steal some of his heat and Porthos makes them a little bubble of warm air and a tiny blue fire and they sit on deck. 

“You love this,” Aramis says, grinning. 

“Yeah, it’s incredible,” Porthos says. 

“Your hair’s a mess. All fluffy like clouds.”

“Went for a swim with Luce and Brujon. He’s a spark, ain’t he?”

“I like both him and Clermont. Um, I’ve been talking to Athos a lot. About Marsac. Is it… are we good? Me and you?” Aramis asks, looking worried and silly and kind of adorable. Porthos hugs him tight and nods, throat thick. 

“Always. Just a disagreement, babe,” Porthos says. 

“You still have Charles watching Marsac,” Aramis blurts, all miserable. “Athos says I should leave it, but I love him. I want you to like him too.”

“Well I’m not going to, not easily. I don’t hate him, though. Just think he could do with an eye on him, for his good as much as anything. Aramis, he has been through a lot, we don’t know even a portion of it. I think he needs a lot of help, but I haven’t got that to give him. All I’ve got is a security blanket, to keep him from doing something he regrets. Keep him from hurting himself or someone else. You. Mostly you, really, don’t give much of a fuck about those other randoms he might hurt.”

“Alright. I don’t like it, but ok,” Aramis say, then snorts and shakes his head at Porthos, face scrunching up before straightening out, smoothing as he looks back at the see, all wonder and joy. “Oh! She’s got faster! Did you see that?”

“We’re gonna be in trouble by tomorrow if she keeps on like this, she just cuts through ice we’ve got to go around,” Porthos says, squinting at the water ahead of them where the Winter Chameleon has just gone straight through an ice berg, the sea is thick with ice now, the crew are shouting and tacking to the left to circle it. “She’s going to outstrip us, leave us in the dust.”

“Clermont and Charlotte think they might be able to adapt the tag so it transmits and leaves a trail, so we can follow slower,” Aramis says. “Me and Marsac went to talk to them.”

“I haven’t seen Christoph and de Foix for a bit,” Porthos says, yawning. It’s getting late, towards food time, he hopes they’re going to stop tonight. He sleeps better when they anchor. 

“They have been drinking,” Aramis says. “Athos goes and plays cards with them, they drink gin and rum.”

“Why am I not invited?”

“You’ve been on deck obsessing over Candice.”

“Candice?”

“The water demon we’re following.”

“Candice the Winter Chameleon. Nice,” Porthos says. 

Lucie and Cho and Clermont come out, then, the deck below, with Munier and Christoph. Clermont and Lucie are in wetsuits and apparate away, they must have found a way to adapt the tag. Porthos watches until they come back aboard and the ship slows, the crew tossing the anchor into the water and there’s an almost audible relaxing, relief as the magic they’ve sustained for the past two days goes out of the sails and the ship settles. Munier heads back down the ship toward the steering house and Porthos gasps, still astounded, as they sink into the water. 

“It conserves heat,” d’Artagnan says, coming to join them, watching the water close around them. “Apparently. I asked.”

“Did you ask Athos, and is he drunk?” Porthos says, sceptical. d'Artagnan laughs and wraps his arms around Aramis, fond and happy. Porthos notices Marsac on the deck below them again; d’Artagnan is taking his job seriously and staying close. 

“I asked Munier,” d’Artagnan says. “But, yes, Athos is drunk. So is de Foix. They were singing when I passed de Foix’s cabin.” 

“Good god,” Aramis says. 

“Do you think there’s food soon?” Porthos says. 

They head to the mess to find out and sure enough there is fish and chips, which makes Porthos very very happy. The next few days they move slower and slower, ice in the water becoming more solid and the gaps between smaller, they have to cut through sometimes or go around looking for weak spots to break it away. The trace of the tag becomes fainter and harder to follow as it gets deeper and moves more and more through ice where they can’t. de Foix sobers up and he and Christoph help Lucie and Charlotte and Cho come up with a way to amplify the signal, which makes it easier. Porthos is bored, he spends most of his time with Athos playing cards, or with Aramis on deck, or sitting with d’Artagnan. He and Brujon go into the water sometimes and explore but it’s too cold, even with spells, to stay in for longer than forty minutes to an hour and it takes longer and longer to warm up afterwards. The ship is beginning to feel enclosed, and it’s beginning to smell of damp men and sweat and fish. After five days of this slow there’s a stop in the middle of the day (though it’s light most of the time Munier has been stopping them at night and taking them under so it’s dim at least, if not pitch dark).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS cont: Aramis describes being left with dead friends and being alone in a strange country and feeling sad and alone about it. Marsac still kinda wants to kill Treville.


	7. Chapter 7

Porthos finds Athos and d’Artagnan and they head for Munier’s cabin and find him looking over maps with Christoph and Lucie, de Foix sitting by, Charlotte and Cho going over reports of ice dragons again, Brujon and Clermont hanging around. Fleur is there too, looking over Munier’s shoulder and helping him with the course they’ve taken so far. Munier looks up when they come in and gestures for them to join him. 

“We’ve lost the trace,” Lucie explains. “It just vanishes. We thought it must have gone through some of the ice, but we’re more or less at solid ice now, almost at the land mass here. There’s no trace where it might have exited.”

“Maybe it didn’t exit,” Brujon says, then goes bright red when they all turn to look at him. “Sorry.”

“No, good thought,” Lucie says, turning back to the maps. “We’ve searched all along the coast here, but we haven’t looked in the ice. We lose the trace in the ice, do you think maybe we could find it?”

“What are the spells you’ve used again?” Porthos asks, going to join them. 

It takes them hours but eventually they do find a way to trace the tag through the ice. Munier takes them under water and they use a mix of spells and echo-location technology to find the place Candice vanished. 

“It’s a cave,” Cho says, gaping at the hole in the ice. “Can we get in there?”

“Yeah, but if it gets narrower I’m bringing us back out. We can’t survive under the ice long and if we get stuck, we’re dead,” Munier says, calling orders. 

They enter the tunnel and move forward. It doesn’t get narrower, it gets wider, but Munier brings them back out anyway and to the surface, deciding that if they’re going caving they need to be better prepared. They plan to do a reconnaissance tomorrow, sending in swimmers ahead of the ship to scout out the caves. They can only stay in the water for hour stints, so that’s not too successful. As they prepare the ship for a long dive Athos designs metal fish like he used for the Triwizard task and d’Artagnan makes them waterproof, Brujon and Clermont coming up with a spell to get them moving in a pattern. Athos attaches film equipment to them and lets Brujon charm it so it’ll keep transmitting even from miles away, but Athos demands that he be allowed to spell it so it’s compatible with magic. Porthos puts his foot down. In the end Athos writes the spells and lets d’Artagnan and Aramis do the actual work on the fish. 

“This is Porthos-ist,” Porthos grumbles, playing with his wand and glaring at the fish that he’s not allowed to charm. 

“Yep,” Athos says. “You always laugh at my charms work, this is revenge for your betrayal.”

“I will get revenge for your revenge,” Porthos vows. 

It’s an idle threat and Athos knows it; the spells he’s come up with are too clever and Porthos is too impressed to be annoyed. Besides which he was allowed to do the charms so they keep moving and spell the clockwork to stay waterproof. They send the school of metal fish out, Athos watching proudly from on deck then rushing to de Foix’s cabin where they’re monitoring the video feed from seeing as he’s the only one who has two extra compartment room bits as well as the bit with the bed in. Porthos is sat there with an orange, a cup of coffee for Athos, de Foix and Lucie and Brujon with him. Aramis and d’Artagnan are somewhere with Marsac, Clermont and Charlotte shut up doing research on what they’ve collected so far, Cho and Christoph helping to make the ship ready with Munier. 

“Come look at this,” Porthos says, waving his wand to transfigure an empty shoe box into a chair for Athos. He makes it extra squishy and big and cushiony but Athos glares so he waves his wand again to make it a more normal kind. His own is big and cushiony. No matter how glare-y everyone is about it. “That pattern spell the boys came up with it genius. If your fish sense a wall they turn ninety degrees and the pattern turns with them, so they just follow a grid no matter what the space is. Clever.”

“Have they found much?” Athos asks. 

“Lot’a ice, little caves, tunnels. There seem to be a lot of them,” Porthos says. 

“If you get orange on my tech I’m gonna have my fish squad eat you up,” Athos says, taking his mug of coffee and shifting the screen so he has control, tapping the mouse. All of this is Athos’s stuff, with a big dollop of magic that’s Porthos’s though so he feels if he wants to get orange on it, he should be allowed. 

“What’s that?” de Foix says. “Can we make the fish go back?”

“No, but…” Athos clicks twice, shifting to a fish further back, following at a slightly different angle. This time Porthos sees the deep crack too. Athos clicks again and the last fish is suddenly their view point and Athos has changed its course enough that it heads into the crack, spreading faint light. 

“Can we not call the others back?” de Foix says. 

“Yeah, but they’ll come back to the ship,” Athos says, tapping at his keyboard. 

“Here,” Porthos says, tapping his wand against the keyboard. Athos snatches it away, glaring, then sighs. 

“Fine. Now they’ll reach whatever grid co-ordinates Pip just set and then redeploy,” Athos says, fussing about Porthos being helpful. Porthos grins and kisses his cheek and Athos gives him a fond, annoyed look and steals the last of his orange. 

“Pip?” Porthos asks, then gets distracted as the fish stream into the crack and they get multiple pictures of it, with better light. “Oh wow. It’s like glass.”

“Amazing,” de Foix says. Lucie presses her hands to his shoulders and beams. 

The fish go deeper and deeper, following the chasm. They expect it to get narrower but it doesn’t, just deeper. And then they hit the bottom and spread out and out and out, and they are under the ice, under the land mass, beneath the Antarctic in a great cavern that seems to be endless. They do eventually reach ground, or the bottom of the cavern anyway, and find it crevassed and pockmarked, rough with oddly frozen waves and disturbances, frost and ice growing. 

“There! There’s Clarice,” Lucie says. “Wow. She’s not invisible at all, here.”

White, big, great sides breathing, ice coming off her and steam, she’s lying curled around a wave of ice, eyes shut. She’s sleeping, her breath sending the fish around her in eddies and flushes. Porthos gazes, still fascinated, still overawed by her beauty. 

“She’s fantastic,” Porthos breathes. 

“Yeah,” Lucie says. “This ship would fit down there, wouldn’t it? And look, she doesn’t see the fish or disturbances as a threat.”

“I’ll go tell Munier,” de Foix says. “Let’s leave the fish down there, the boys can monitor. Take it in turns to sleep.”

“Aw, I love not being the young’uns,” Porthos says, grinning. “I’ll get them a couple of bags of crisps and the good coffee.”

“Not my coffee,” Athos says, affronted. “Do you think anyone who writes about this will put my fishes in, Porthos?”

“Yes,” Porthos says, making a mental note to give everyone a talking to so that they will. Just in case they weren’t planning on it. Anything to keep that tiny breathless spark of hopeful joy in Athos alive. It’s so rare and so incredible. “You’re as beautiful as Candice.”

“Yes,” Athos agrees, laughing. “And you are a complete idiot. We’ll keep an eye till the boys come, Luce, if you want to go find Cho and tell her the news.”

Lucie smacks a kiss on the top of Athos’s head and bounces out. Porthos pushes the monitor so he can watch better and pays attention to Candice and the ice caves, the fish looking for walls and ceiling and blockages. He doesn’t really notice Athos moving quietly about until there’s a cut off curse and a little ‘oops’. He looks up and sees Athos by the porthole, hand against the bottom, water coming rushing in. Porthos jumps up and goes to fix it. 

“What were you trying to do?” he asks. 

“Who says that was me?” Athos says. 

Porthos examines the wood around the porthole and finds odd little carvings off fish. He laughs. 

“Are you turning caveman and doing a painting of your story?” Porthos asks, around his giggles. Athos gives the carving a bewildered look and sighs. 

“I was just trying to see where the fish were, in regards to us,” Athos says, grimacing. 

Porthos laughs harder, leaning on the wall. Athos shoves him and goes to watch the monitors, leaving Porthos to his hilarity. Porthos waits till his laughter has died down and Athos has forgotten him, then he runs his fingers over the carvings. They’re beautiful in their oddness and Porthos feels flooded with affection for Athos, all over-fond and saturated with feeling. Brujon and Clermont come and relieve them and Porthos goes to the galley in search of food and maybe a story or two from Mr Cantier, leaving Athos to find Aramis (his stated aim. Porthos is sure his real aim is cuddles, Athos is doing lots of strategic cuddling with Aramis, since Marsac). They all meet up later for dinner in the mess, and Fleur comes to joins them to tell them odd stories about ice-monster-fish the size of rhinoceroses. Porthos sleeps that night with Athos, curled around him, holding him good and tight against his chest. He dreams of fish and monsters and deep, deep ocean. 

The next morning is the last they’ll be above for a while so the ship is opened up to the air, all hatches and portholes flung wide, and Agnes does a quick health check on anyone who wants it or might need it. She tells Porthos, who helps her out so as not to be bored senseless, about her son Henry and her husband. The crew jump into the water later and Porthos joins them, they get freezing cold playing chase and have a big, hot brunch and use up the hot water all of them getting warm again. There’s a great bustle as they prepare to go under and Porthos makes himself small and tucked out of the way on deck. To his surprise Marsac joins him up there, he doesn’t make a fuss though just grunts and extends his bubble of warmth as the ship sinks into the water, under an ice float, down and down back to the cave opening. 

The first hour is easy, they find the crack following the maps they’ve made from the fish and enter it easily enough, sinking deeper and deeper. They have to stop twice to adjust to the pressure and Porthos begins to feel sick, along with a few others, so they decide to stop for the rest of the day and anchor themselves to the wall of the chasm. Porthos and Aramis sleep curled together, both feeling weird and headachy and ill from the pressure, but by the evening they’re ok again and Porthos eats enough to make up for not having much in the day time and Marsac watches, boggling at him as he ploughs his way through his dinner. Porthos laughs eventually and invites Marsac to play cards. To his annoyance Aramis helps Marsac cheat so Porthos can’t win every game. Just most of them. 

They reach the cavern the next day about lunch time and it’s bigger when you can in all directions, darker without the fish. Munier lights the ships lanterns and they move slowly along the bottom, keeping lookouts to watch for ice and frozen waves and icicles from the roof. They find a few stray fish and bring them aboard for maintenance, keeping some back in case they should need them. They head for Candice and anchor near her so Cho and Charlotte and Clermont can complete their research. They’re surprised to find her barely visible again, still curled asleep. Her breath seems to warm the water around her, cocooning her. She breathes long and slow and the water has movement so she is sometimes visible as the cocoon is disturbed, but the longer they are there the less visible she gets.

They have three days to explore the cavern, then two days to return to the surface. Charlotte and Clermont spend as much time as they can the first two days in the water examining Candice while the ship moves slowly, edging over and around the ice, searching for signs of life. They find nothing. It’s incredible, the light and the dimnesses, the water moving and then slowly, sluggishly freezing in tiny thin layers, then breaking up. There’s some kind of tide here that keeps it from freezing entirely. d'Artagnan takes to sitting on deck and describing what he can see, writing letter after letter to send to Constance when they resurface. The third day everyone is pretty fed up – they’ve found nothing, Candice is definitely hibernating and completely invisible again, the air in the ship is stale, everything smells, the water is all recycled except the drinking water and food is rationed. de Foix and Christoph take Brujon and Clermont out, in wetsuits and bubble-head charms, and come back with samples of ice but they still find nothing. Everyone is more than ready to head back to the surface, discouraged and fed up. 

Porthos goes to keep Brujon company, back to monitoring the fish. They’ve picked a few up on their way but there are still a fair amount in the water sending footage. Brujon still has a stash of chocolate which is the real reason Porthos subjects himself to staring at a screen. He’s eating a half-melted Kitkat and sending spells through Athos’s tech just to see what happens when something makes him sit up straight. He repeats the last spell and the image comes up again, a kind of map with heat signatures and contours, created from the fish’s info. Porthos sends Brujon to go fetch Athos and tries to work it out without breaking everything. Athos comes and has a go at him for messing with things then frowns. 

“What?” Athos says. 

“Can you impose the shape of Candice over the heat sig?” Porthos asks. 

Athos shrugs and types away for a while, then presses enter. Porthos breathes out slowly. 

“That isn’t just Candice,” Porthos says, and pushes himself away from the table, finishing the Kitkat and rushing up on deck, trying to find Charlotte on his way. He sends Brujon when Brujon wanders past enjoying his freedom from the screens. Brujon sighs but goes. “There is more than one Winter Chameleon there. They’re heating up the water and look: the ice around them, below them, is melting.”

“There are at least four,” Lucie says. Porthos found her, de Foix, and Munier on deck and now they’re staring at the place where Candice used to be. 

“Look at the water around them,” de Foix says. 

The water is moving faster there and the ice is indeed melting, making a dip in the surface, a growing valley full of Winter Chameleons. Cho and Charlotte come up and join them and start getting excited and soon all three women are in the water trying to get more of the beasts tagged and to see if they’re all the same kind of mix, armed with cameras and wands. Porthos watches them fight the water, trying to get some cold in so they can see the creatures. He frowns as ice forms on the surfaces at the edges of the valley, brief and always breaking up and melting away before it really forms. There are shapes there. 

“de Foix?” Porthos asks, following some of the shapes in the ice. 

“Mm?”

“Do dragons hibernate?”

“Some. Why?”

“I think maybe they should come out of the water. That heat spot is growing, look, you can see the ice melting, the valley sinking and widening,” Porthos says. “I really think they should come back. Now.”

Brujon comes running out onto deck, then, panting, and suggests the same thing, Athos on his heels. Athos leans over the rails. 

“My fish,” he says, sadly. 

de Foix sends up sparks to signal Lucie and they apparate onto deck within minutes. Athos suggests strongly that they should head for the chasm and Munier calls to his crew. Porthos watches the lines of ice, the frozen waves. There’s shifting there. 

“Oh my god,” Porthos whispers. 

There’s a line of waves that curls around the valley and as he’s been watching it has started to move, threading through the ice, breaking away. He follows it along and sees the great head rise, deep in the cavern, huge, filmy eyes blinking open. Athos gasps and they watch together, agape, as Munier calls frantic orders and the ship shoots through the water, as the ground beneath them crumbles away: it’s not ground, it’s huge wings. The entire cavern seems to be dragon. The Winter Chameleons twist and curl, the ice shards the dragon leaves falling into their valley and making them visible as they fall deeper into colder water, coming entirely into sight, asleep and moving around one another. There are twenty, thirty, hundreds of them, different sizes, all asleep. They sink deeper as the dragon rises, the ship speeding toward the chasm. Athos bemoans the fate of his fish again as one of them falls from the wing and shatters against the hard-scaled neck of the dragon, coming to pieces and tumbling, tumbling, then frozen in dragon’s breath. They hit the chasm wall, cushioned by crewmen’s magic, and fly up, tethering as the pressure changes too fast. The cavern below them is all movement now, breaking up, breaking away, the ground widening and rumbling. 

“Did you see that?” Lucie whispers, holding onto Cho’s arm. 

“Beautiful,” Cho says. “Charlie is gonna be green with jealousy.”

“You’re beautiful,” Lucie says, making Cho laugh. 

Porthos watches as they kiss, right at the prow of the ship, as the great head of the dragon appears. He catches his breath as the eye passes, but it’s not coming up, it’s turning, it’s scales pass, ice and thick stone or rock beneath, translucent, moving and shifting in the water like it’s part of the ocean, part of the ice, wings folded but moving, stretching and flexing, a great claw, a tail. 

“Do you think there’s just one?” Porthos asks. 

“My fish are still exploring this cavern,” Arthos murmurs. “It’s huge. I think more than one.”

“We really found ice dragons,” Porthos says. “Where are the others?”

They’re gathering, de Foix and Charlotte and Christoph, Marsac, Brujon and Clermont, Agnes, Fleur, even Mr Cantier, the crew. Aramis and d’Artagnan come to join Athos and Porthos and Porthos wraps his arm around Aramis’s waist, holding him, feeling him fragile and vibrating with excitement against Porthos’s arm. They all stand, looking down, the chasm around them coming away. They’re stuck here for a few hours at least, they can only hope the chasm holds, but either way, Porthos finds himself certain that it was worth this even if they end up dropping back into the cavern. This, this creature, this place. He catches hold of Athos’s hand and d’Artagnan grips his arm and they stand together.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ok so I miscounted the chapters oops. last one is THIS one.

“How much longer?” Munier asks.

“Half an hour,” Cho says, as more of the chasm crumbles away.

Munier brings them higher inch by inch as the chasm melts. There are three dragons, now, circling below them, and as the roof of the cavern comes away there’s a fourth in the ice there. They’re depressurizing too fast and they’re all going to get sick but hopefully they’ll live and this might be better than being eaten by a dragon. Lucie and de Foix are in the water, excited about the dragons, trying to get a tag on one of them. Porthos is sat watching, listening to Munier and Cho try and balance ‘not dying by shooting out of the depths of the ocean’ with ‘not dying of dragon’.

“We could pressurize the bubble,” Porthos mutters, thinking outloud as the chasm begins to crumble faster around them – the movement of the beasts is speeding things up.

“We have, as much as we can while still having oxygen,” Munier says.

“Double bubble,” Porthos says. “Use an outer layer for pressure and an inner for oxygen. Wouldn’t be able to leave the ship, it’d be close in terms of air- nothing in nothing out. But we can get out of this chasm.”

“Do it,” Munier says.

Porthos gets to his feet and gathers Clermont and Brujon to help him and gets Christoph to fetch Lucie and de Foix. They prepare their spellwork with the crew while Lucie and de Foix return on board and then when everyone is accounted for they raise a second skin around the ship and Porthos and Brujon use a mix of charms and transfiguration to trick the inner bubble into thinking they’re still deep in the ocean.

“Ready!” Porthos calls, as the chasm comes alive, two smaller dragons cracking the ice, wings coming up around the ship and twisting around it.

“Take us up fast as we go!” Munier yells.

The ship catapults upwards, leaving a trail of bubbles and disturbance that has the dragons turning closer, great bodies and tails tightening around them. They can’t use magic, nothing in or out of the skins around the ship, so they have to rely on speed, Munier and the crew yelling to each other. They hit the roof of the tunnel and the crew shift their spells, propelling them back into the ocean and up, up, the dragons on their trail, the smaller ones coming out with them and then stilling. Porthos looks back and sees them suspended, the open ocean too wide for them, their ice falling away and their bodies cracking with the currents, breathing hard to encase themselves in ice they retreat back into the tunnel and the ship is free, buoyed up into the air. Porthos breathes out and sits hard on the deck. This all very well, but…

“Can you start work on depressurizing the outer skin?” Munier asks, coming across the deck.

“Ah,” Porthos says. “About that.”

Munier glares. Porthos gives him a disarming smile and hurries down to de Foix’s cabin to work on a solution. Marsac and Aramis are there, and Lucie and Christoph. They work for hours, Porthos’s head aching with the odd sickness he experienced before, the ship moving oddly under him, his mind clouded. He only half listens as the others bicker around him, going over and over his spells.

“Shoddy work,” Marsac says, close to his ear. “Too quick. There are gaps, look.”

“What did you do to save us then?” Porthos asks, frustrated at the mocking, smug note in Marsac’s voice.

“Oh, nothing, but I have an idea now. Like I said, shoddy spellwork, Vallon. We can puncture your skin like a balloon; ease one of your gaps, let it depressurize slowly.”

To Porthos’s irritation, that turns out to be actually workable and Marsac is even more smug. Porthos grabs Aramis and drags him to his cabin for cuddles and naps until their heads clear.

“I’m not feeling too bad this time,” Aramis starts.

“Cuddles,” Porthos growls. “Your boyfriend is driving me nuts, you owe me.”

Aramis laughs and denies that Marsac is his boyfriend, but climbs into bed with Porthos and is nice to him until he falls asleep. By the time Porthos wakes up they’re nearly back to normal. The air is thinning as they run short of oxygen and the smell is so bad it’s making some people seasick, including Athos who has come to curl up with Porthos and Aramis. They lie together, complaining back and forth, until all of a sudden there’s a rush of air and a cheer goes up. Athos breathes a sigh of relief and waves his wand. The ship comes apart around Porthos’s porthole and freezing air flushes in with a flurry of snow and water that freeze around them. Athos waves his wand again, frantically, and the ice and snow form into snow cats. Porthos laughs and fixes things, shivering, teeth chattering. Aramis reheats the cabin.

“At least the air is fresh now,” Athos grumbles, stowing his wand. “My fish, Porthos.”

“I know,” Porthos soothes, kissing Athos’s grumpy frown. “We saved some and we can always make you more.”

“Don’t indulge me,” Athos says, turning his face away from Porthos’s kisses. “I want you to feel bad for losing my fish.”

“Me?” Porthos says. “How is this my fault?”

“Everything is your fault,” Athos grumbles.

“Someone needs a nap,” Aramis says, amused.

Athos stubbornly holds out for ten minutes but then falls deeply, deeply asleep, Aramis wrapped around him holding him close. Porthos leaves them to it; he’s feeling better and he wants air. He heads up on deck at the back of the ship, lower level, looking for some shelter. He finds d’Artagnan leaning there, watching Marsac, who’s sat with his legs dangling between the rails.

“I’m not comfortable doing this anymore,” d’Artagnan says. “I don’t want to guard him. He’s not done anything. I kind of almost like him, and I definitely feel sorry for him.”

“Fine,” Porthos snaps, irritated. Then he sighs. “Alright, that’s fine. Go on, go send your letters to Connie.”

“Ok. I told her hi from you,” d’Artagnan says, squeezing Porthos’s arm. He brightens, suddenly. “Hey, now I’ll have time to see what Lucie’s up to.”

“Unless she’s poly, that ship has sailed my friend,” Porthos says.

“Oh,” d’Artagnan says, deflating. “I can always ask?”

Porthos nods and d’Artagnan bounces away. Porthos goes to sit next to Marsac, watching the ocean with him.

“I never expected that,” Marsac says.

“What?”

“The whole cave coming to pieces, all that ice, all those dragons!” Marsac says. His eyes are distant. “I’ve seen a lot.”

Porthos grunts, non-committal, but then Marsac looks at him and his eyes are piercing, full of pain and wonder.

“It has been a very long time since I found anything in this god forsaken world beautiful,” Marsac says.

“Oh,” Porthos says, meeting Marsac’s eyes. Marsac actually smiles.

“I don’t think we’re ever going to be friends,” Marsac says. “And I know I lost Aramis a long time ago.”

“He cares about you,” Porthos says.

“I know. I thought seeing him again, I thought… I’ve had this dream, for so long, that I’d find him and together we’d hunt them down, the ones who did this to us, punish them.”

“And now?”

“And now I found him again and together we found… something else,” Marsac says. “I know that you guys are staying here another month, then heading back to England, back to teaching in September.”

“We hadn’t made plans,” Porthos says though that option has been growing in his mind as something he’d like. He misses teaching.

“It’ll be August, soon. Professor Chang says she’s writing to Charlie Weasley and suggesting they start a research post here,” Marsac says. “I think I’ll stay.”

“Just don’t vanish on him,” Porthos says.

Marsac is silent and Porthos knows that there’s no promise Marsac can make. He respects that Marsac doesn’t pretend. They sit together in silence for a long time, until Aramis comes out. Then Porthos touches Marsac’s shoulder.

“You can’t give him much, I know. I know trauma, Marsac, whatever you think of me. Just be honest with him,” Porthos says. “And… well, Aramis cares a lot about people, even though sometimes he’s a bit giddy and odd about it. Let him care.”

“You are such a sop,” Marsac says.

Porthos snorts and gets up, leaving Aramis and Marsac alone. Truly alone, this time.

*

They do stay out the month, heading into the caves in groups to get the dragons tagged, sitting and watching them from the tunnels or in de Foix’s cabin. Athos works on his fish, making them more streamlined and adjusting the heat signature until they can creep in with the Winter Chameleons and go unnoticed. He makes some, with the help of Porthos, which reflect light and water and go almost invisible, the dragons don’t mind those. de Foix and Christoph spend most time in the water, swimming the great beasts. Christoph does beautiful ink line sketches of scales and movement and water that end up scattered around the ship. Porthos likes swimming with d’Artagnan among the smaller dragons and going deeper and deeper, exploring with de Foix, pushing the limits.

They find, one day, a nest of eggs that crack. They swim away fast and conceal themselves, avoiding the notice of one of the biggest dragons they’ve seen. Porthos and de Foix hadn’t noticed it it had been so big. They stay very still as the eggs hatch, tiny creatures appearing by the dozen. Several float away and are lost, the mother has kept the next frozen and as they drift the small creatures disintegrate in the heat. The mother breathes ice over the ones that remain. Porthos and de Foix inch their way back down the tunnel and through the other dragons. They’ve got good at going unnoticed and make it back to the ship breathless with excitement to make a fish that can penetrate to their previous position and monitor the nest.  
Porthos also likes sitting in the steering house with Fleur, or on deck with Marsac. He and Marsac usually remain in silence, easy with one another, finding peace of a kind together. There’s still not trust but they both like watching the ocean. Marsac weeps, sometimes, or rages. Porthos sits when he weeps but retreats when he’s angry, leaving him alone or sending Aramis or Agnes. Fleur likes to hear stories of the dragons but doesn’t want to go herself so often Porthos will retreat to her and tell her adventure stories, embellishing as he goes to make her laugh, lightening his mood after Marsac’s intensity. He sits with Marsac, he admits to Athos, partly because he doesn’t trust him. He wants to know the man before he leaves, needs to be sure that he isn’t going to come after Treville.

“Aramis thinks you’re making friends,” Athos says. It’s late, they’re in Athos’s cabin, in bed. Athos is being soft and gentle, close and warm. He’s probably wanting sex at some point.

“Yeah I know, I can’t bring myself to tell him otherwise,” Porthos says. “do you think that’s ok?”

“I think it’s fine,” Athos says. “You’re lovely, you don’t have to be a saint.”

“True. Athos, I get Marsac, sometimes. He’s so twisted up with guilt and anger and grief,” Porthos says. “Treville has been my friend and has been there for me, but I push it aside, sometimes, in order to accept him. I find it hard.”

“Ferron?”

“He brought it to the surface,” Porthos says. “I was wondering why, I thought maybe… but I think he was just being cruel for the fun of it.”

“Mm. I don’t like him.”

Athos strokes Porthos’s cheek, smiling, and presses a kiss to his forehead and his eye and his lips. Definitely sex at some point this evening. Porthos returns the smile and turns onto his back, feeling mellow and warm.

“I want to go back to teaching,” Athos says. “I enjoyed this, but I miss it.”

“Me too,” Porthos says. “You think Aramis and d’Art will come back with us?”

Athos shrugs, uninterested in either of them right now. Uninterested in continuing the conversation either, Porthos discovers. Porthos doesn’t mind. He is quite happy with Athos putting his mouth to other uses.

*  
The day comes, eventually, when some of them head back. Part of the crew, de Foix, Cho Chang, Brujon. Brujon wants to come teach at Hogwarts and Porthos has promised him an Teaching Assistant position if nothing else. He wrote to McGonagall and she had got cross with him but had admitted that she has already thought of starting a TA programme and that if he thinks Brujon will help in transfiguration he can come back. Porthos suggests delicately that Constance might make better use of him and discovers that Hagrid has that position already. The day they leave Aramis and Marsac embrace, but there are no tears. Aramis touches Marsac’s chest over his heart and says something soft, then comes to Porthos and nods. Porthos nods back and wraps an arm over his shoulders. They have a portkey back to Freetown, skipping the ocean voyage this time. They spend a week with Sandra and then they have to get a portkey back to the UK, back to Diagon Alley. They walk arm in arm toward Porthos’s flat in the evening sunshine, one day late in August, back at the beginning of it all.

“We found ice dragons,” d’Artagnan says.

“We did! And Winter Chameleons,” Aramis says.

“And Marsac,” Porthos says.

“Well done us,” Athos says, deeply sarcastic.

It sets them all laughing and they reach Porthos’s flat just as the sun goes down and turns the sky a furious red, like fire, lighting them up as they laugh and laugh, clinging to each other. 

*

“I thought it would be an adventure, return to France, the auditeurs had a rep and I grew up in that countryside, in Gascony,” Treville says, turning his cup on its china saucer, stirring in a horrific amount of Splenda. “I passed the auditeurs’ tests easily enough. It was nice to… there was a lot more bureaucracy, more policing and less chasing down death eaters. It was more like being a policeman, especially when we ended up at the protests like that. I was bored, I gladly accepted the offer of escorting a bunch of kids home. Yes, that was me, Aramis. I was there. I was meant to protect you.” 

They’re in Porthos’s small flat, Aramis and Treville sitting at the kitchen table with Porthos’s best china, a plate of cookies between them, fresh baked rolls just out of the oven, a huge bowl of fruit on the sideboard for them to help themselves from. Porthos may have over-prepared. Athos rigged up an ipad so Marsac could Facetime with Aramis and keep in touch easily, sent it back with Cho and Charlie, and Marsac is there with them through that. Porthos and Athos are in the hallway, just out of sight, listening in. 

“Why didn’t you protect us?” Marsac demands.

“Does it matter?” Treville says. “Well, I suppose it does. Porthos told me once that ignoring everything in past to build a future is not building. Ok. I got lost. Simple as that, really: one moment I was with you, the next I was checking in with my captain and you lot were off down alleys and winding away. I did catch up, but it was too late. I insisted on being the one who informed the family, if that helps, I acted as family liaison.”

“You went with Aramis to talk to the families,” Marsac says. 

“I really didn’t know it was you, you were using your mother’s name and you were very much younger, you had a buzzcut!” Treville says, laughing, then stopping. “You were also gaunt and underfed and traumatized.”

“I remember you,” Aramis whispers, the first words he’s spoken since Treville arrived two hours ago. Porthos and Athos look at one another, breath held. “You were kind.”

“I hope so, I tried to be. I quit, after that, came back to England and hunted death eaters because it was a clear case of ‘wrong’. I found shades of grey too hard, ended up hurting the people I should be helping, it felt,” Treville says. “Christoph and Renee and I did what we could, but it wasn’t the same, there were shades of grey here, too. I stuck it out for a year, then quit and applied to teach, and there was Porthos.”

“You were there,” Aramis says. 

“I was. I wish I could give all of you peace and bring back the others, but I can’t. What can I do?” Treville asks. 

“Sit with us, listen,” Marsac says. 

“Like you did before,” Aramis says. 

Porthos nods and Athos smiles, getting to his feet. He pulls Porthos up after him and they tiptoe into the livingroom, giving the others privacy. Constance and d’Artagnan are sprawled on the sofa together, Hedwig spread over them colossal and purring and covering them in fur. Sylvie’s sat reading frantically through some legislation Hermione Granger owled to her unexpectedly, a joint between thumb and finger, eyes the odd lovely colour they go when she’s high. Constance and d’Artagnan look like they have perhaps been sharing that joint. Porthos and Athos opt to sit in the window seat and get pounced on by Grigot, scrambling, somehow, up the wall. Athos looks at the cat, looks at the long drop to the street, then looks up at the drainpipe. Or maybe Gringot came off the roof and maybe the pounce was more of a tumble. Porthos scratches his fur and smiles, feeling like life is back to normal. 

There’s a crash and Athos lets out a tiny ‘oops’ as the shrunk metal fish he was playing with suddenly expands and hits the floor, coming to pieces and rolling away, Gringot chasing after them happily, tiny fish images carving themselves into the floorboards where the metal fish shattered. 

Or as normal as things ever get, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> (title from Prufrock)


End file.
